


Speaking for the Dead

by jade-1459 (Jade)



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Alternate Universe, Established Relationship, Incest, M/M, Post-Hell, dean with kid(s), dean with power(s)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2009-11-22
Updated: 2009-11-22
Packaged: 2017-10-03 14:37:41
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 8
Words: 48,391
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19201
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Jade/pseuds/jade-1459
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>In all of history there have been less than a dozen recorded Necromancers. Most of them destroyed themselves with the madness that came from such an unpredictable gift. Those few who survived, who learned to control that cold affinity, were feared for the power they wielded. When Dean is kidnapped by a crazy psychic out to collect the talents of others like him and enslave their souls to fuel his own power base, Sam is left wondering how he's going to pick up the pieces now that his brother seems to have everything he's ever wanted, with just one little catch... (J2/SPN BigBang, 2009)</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Part One**

 

He flinched when the door slammed shut.

 

~*~*~

 

The first time Dean wakes up, he’s only awake long enough to realize that he has no idea where he is and that someone is screaming shrilly in the background. From another room, he figures since the sound is kind of muted, like there’s at least one wall between him and whatever was making that kind of trapped animal sound.

 

He’s got that cotton ball taste in his mouth he gets when he’s been pumped with sedatives. And his head is throbbing in counter beat with his heart.

 

The last thing he remembers thinking clearly was that sedatives and concussions usually weren’t a good thing to mix. And then that cotton ball taste sucked him back under.

 

~*~*~

 

The next time he woke up Dean wasn’t even a hundred percent sure he was awake.

 

The screaming had stopped. Replaced by someone humming softly a few feet away.

 

“Sam,” he called out hoarsely. His throat didn’t feel dry, but his voice sounded like it should be. “Sam,” he tried again, forcing his eyes open.

 

“There’s no one else here,” someone said.

 

Dean glanced over to see who’d spoken to him and saw a woman sitting in a second cage a few feet away. She was running her fingers through the hair of a child sleeping on her lap.

 

The humming had stopped, leaving silence behind filled only with Dean’s relieved sigh. He tried to move his hands out from behind his back, but couldn’t get them lose from the rope.

 

“Where’s here?” Dean asked.

 

“Don’t know,” the woman answered. She didn’t look up from the sleeping kid.

 

Dean shifted, tugging a little at the ropes binding his wrists. “You remember how you got here? Or who took us?”

 

“I don’t know who he is,” the woman answered. “But he tore the front wall off my house when he came for us. Killed everyone else who was there. Except for Charlie. I think he got away.”

 

“Who’s Charlie?” Dean asked. He gave up trying to get his hands free and just wiggled his body closer to the cage bars so he could sit up instead. If there was someone out there who knew they’d been taken, who might be looking for them even now…

 

“Charlie’s my familiar.”

 

The silence after that stretched out between them for a few minutes while Dean just stared at the woman across from him. “You’re a witch,” he stated. Except he didn’t think that was true. His skin wasn’t trying to crawl off his body.

 

 “I would have been called that at one time,” she told him. “But no, I’m not a witch. At least not in the sense you’re thinking of the word.”

 

“Then what are you?”

 

“I’m a psychic,” she said. “A Priestess, actually.”

 

“So you’ve got some mojo?” Dean asked. “What are you still doing here then?”

 

She gave a brief, humourless laugh, but still didn’t look to him. “We knew we were going to be asked to offer sacrifice. We didn’t know when or where or how. And it wasn’t for us to question _why_.” Sighing she added, “But after Jack’s vision, we knew it was going to happen. It was just a matter of time.”

 

“So this is your god’s doing?” Dean asked with no little hint of disgust. He knew that there was gods running around. Most of which hadn’t been worshipped in centuries. He’d had the fact that those old gods were real brought to his attention in the past. He’d killed two of them. If this were something like that, Dean knew he could kill it. Whatever _it_ happened to be.

 

“No,” the woman responded forcefully. “No, my Lord and Lady would never do this to us. Would never break us like this for their own amusement. Free will,” she told him. “We were asked to offer sacrifice and we accepted of our own free will. Our blood was spilt for a greater reason, our sacrifices used to burn a new path. I saw that much.”

 

Dean looked away, looked to the rest of the room. He couldn’t actually see anything beyond their two cages. Everything else was dark and out of focus, but Dean didn’t think too much on it. He knew not all psychics were dangerous; most of them were pretty harmless.

 

The fact that the one sitting in the cage next to him worshipped some random deity, probably an old world one, didn’t sit too well with Dean. Gods, even demi-gods, were unpredictable and dangerous. They got power from their followers, gained strength from the worship and offerings.

 

But it wasn’t like Dean had all that many options open to him at the moment. Even if this woman’s god was responsible for the situation he was currently stuck in, Dean just had to deal with it. Sam wasn’t here, he was on his own and he had to get back to his brother.

 

Dean still wasn’t sure how he felt about that. Some mix between relieved and terrified. Because Sam wasn’t here, and that meant he wasn’t in danger. But then again, Sam wasn’t here, and that meant he could be dead already and Dean wouldn’t know. And after the way he’d stormed out on Sammy… Because, Jesus fucking Christ! Sam wasn’t here and Dean had stormed out of their motel room and Sam might think Dean had actually left him.

 

The humming started again. This time it wasn’t just meaningless sound to Dean when he heard it. Glancing over, Dean watched as the woman hummed a soft lullaby to the kid sleeping on her lap. It was a reach, a deep stretch, but Dean remembered his own mother signing lullabies to him when he was a kid, sick with a fever. And even though the memory was kind of faded, he remembered she couldn’t carry a tune in a bucket, but it had still soothed him then, just like then sound soothed him now.

 

“I’m Dean,” he said finally, breaking his silence.

 

“I know who you are, Dean Winchester,” the woman said, looking to him finally. A small smile tugged at her rather plain face, and brought some of the softness she’d been looking at the kid with to bear on him. “I’m Taylor Morgan. And this sleeping beauty,” she told him, turning her attention back to the kid, “is my daughter, Sage.”

 

Dean looked to the little girl sleeping in her mothers lap. Dean couldn’t make out her features, just that she was small and probably sucking on her thumb. “Do you know how long ago it was you were taken?” Dean asked softly.

 

“A week,” she said. “Maybe a little longer. I haven’t really been able to keep track of the days. But we’ve been moved twice since he took us.”

 

Dean opened his mouth to ask another question but Taylor cut him off, motioning him to silence. She turned wide, terrified eyes in his direction, fingers stilling on the little girl. “Tell her that I loved her,” she whispered frantically. “Tell her she was the best thing I ever did. Twenty seven people have died so far to make you, Dean Winchester, don’t you dare let their sacrifices be for nothing!”

 

She reached through their cages, arms passing through metal bars like they were nothing, grabbing his shoulders. Her fingers gripped him, nails digging into his flesh and shook him hard. “Remember!” she hissed at him.

 

“Now, wake up!”

 

~*~*~

 

Dean jerked awake in his cage, hands numb from being bound behind his back. He could see the room he was being held in now. He was in a basement, light was leaking through the slats that had been nailed over the windows.

 

His throat was dry and his body ached. And he could still taste cotton balls in his mouth. There was dried blood on the side of his face and all Dean could smell was recent death.

 

Jerking his head to the side, looking for Taylor in her cage, Dean ended up gagging at what he saw.

 

Taylor was there, and so was the little girl, Sage. But that was the only thing that was the same.

 

Taylor wasn’t sitting with her back resting against the back of her cage. Her body had been tossed carelessly onto the floor of her cage. Chest and abdominal cavity torn open and a bloody mess. Sightless brown eyes turned toward him, head bent at an unnatural angle.

 

The kid asleep, sucking on her thumb. Covered in blood and curled up next to her mother’s dead body.

 

~*~*~

 

Sam went back to the motel room, frustrated and with more questions then when he’d left that morning.

 

Dean had been missing for three days now.

 

He hadn’t left a note at the motel room. Hadn’t called or texted Sam’s cell. And he wasn’t answering his own cell phone. No one had seen him leave, and the kid at the reception desk for the motel didn’t know when the car had been brought back or by whom.

 

Dean would never have left the car behind. Even when they were wanted by the cops, Dean hadn’t dumped the car, even though it made them a little more conspicuous. Dean loved that car.

 

Something was wrong; Sam knew it in his gut, even though he hadn’t been surprised that Bobby hadn’t known anything about Dean taking off. If Dean wanted to disappear he could literally fall off the face of the planet and no one would be the wiser.

 

Except Dean wouldn’t have just left. Not without telling Sam first.

 

Pushing the door to their motel room open, Sam wasn’t really surprised to see Castiel standing in the middle of the room, looking around with that blankly confused look on his face.

 

“What are you doing here?” Sam demanded closing and locking the door behind him.

 

“A Seal will be broken tomorrow near here,” Castiel answered. “Where is your brother?”

 

“Not here,” Sam snapped. “Not anywhere I’ve looked and everyone in this stupid town can’t remember ever seeing him.”

 

Castiel frowned slightly, head tilted to the side. His gaze slid past Sam as though he were listening to something Sam couldn’t hear. And after everything they’d seen with Anna, Sam wondered if he was listening to the Angel Talk Radio.

 

“Do you know where my brother is?” Sam asked, nearing the end of his rope.

 

Castiel looked back to him, the frown gone, and that black look back on his face. Sam would never admit it, but after first meeting the Angel, Sam was kind of creped out by him now. And he smelt, Sam realized, his nose crinkling a little while he waited for Castiel to answer him.

 

Shaking his head just slightly, he answered. “I don’t know where Dean is. But he’s not dead. I would know if he’d been killed.”

 

Sam let out a deep sigh, some of the tension he hadn’t known he was carrying falling away from him. It was a possibility he hadn’t really let himself think about. Because Dean wouldn’t have just left him like this. Not unless he couldn’t help it. And there were only a couple of things that would prevent his brother from letting him know that he was alive and well, if only just to annoy the crap out of him.

 

“So he’s alive,” Sam breathed.

 

“Yes,” Castiel answered.

 

Sam nodded and turned back to the mess looking for his laptop. “He’s alive,” he repeated, pulling the lumpy laptop from under a pillow on the bed. “I need to check the hospitals again.”

 

Castiel shifted in the room, looking around at the mess. There were papers and books strewn all over the room. “Why isn’t your brother here?” the Angel asked.

 

Sam glanced up from the computer screen while he waited for it to boot up. “We got into a fight the other day. He left to get some air I guess. And he just never came back.”

 

Castiel nodded as though he understood, but his expression clearly said he didn’t have a clue. “When was this?”

 

“Three days ago,” Sam muttered, typing furiously on the computer. He’d already searched the local hospitals for any of the aliases Dean might have been emitted under. He widened his search this time, looking for any John Doe’s that fight Dean’s description. Because either Dean was hurt and couldn’t get to him, or Dean had been taken and couldn’t get to him. At least now, Sam didn’t have to call coroner offices looking for his brother’s body. 

 

“There is a Seal about to be broken near here,” Castiel said again.

 

Sam glanced up from his computer, frowning at the Angel. “So?”

 

Castiel blinked at him. “We need you to stop it.”

 

“And I need to find my brother,” Sam stated.

 

~*~*~

 

Once the sedatives had worn off, it only took Dean a few minutes to get the ropes off his hands. Getting out of his cage was a different matter all together. Whoever had built the damn thing hadn’t flinched at spending the money on good materials. Even the fucking lock looked more secure than most of the holding cells he’d visited from time to time.

 

He was fingering the lock, trying to figure out what he would need to pick it. It didn’t really matter that he didn’t have anything to pick the damn thing with, that his pockets had been emptied of everything – lint included. He just needed something to do. Something to keep his mind busy and away from thinking.

 

Because if he started thinking too much he was going to go back to wondering if he’d actually had a conversation with the dead woman in the cell next to his, or if it had all been some kind of dream. Or possibly both, if it was a real conversation and the woman really were a psychic. But she was dead, had obviously been dead for a few days now. Which sort of put the whole experience firmly into the dream category, except it had felt so real.

 

Giving up on distracting himself with the lock, Dean took another look around the room he was being kept in. He was in some basement, and a pretty clean one except for the congealed pool of blood in the other cage. There weren’t any cob webs hanging from the rafters, tools had been put neatly away against the back wall, even the wood slats covering the windows looked new and fresh.

 

Whoever had taken him, had probably just set up this little operation, or else he was more anal and a bigger neat freak than Sammy was. Because Jesus Christ even the boxes were neatly labelled – _good china_, _family photos (framed)_, _research journals (2003-2005)_ – and stacked under the stairs.

 

Stealing himself, Dean looked back to the other cage. The kid had still been asleep, however long ago it was he’d woken up. He’d wanted to call over to her, wake her up and get her out of that mess, out of the pool of blood she lying in to snuggle close to the body.

 

This time when he looked, the kid was looking back at him. Her thumb firmly in her mouth. She was watching him, and Dean felt his gut tighten to recognize the expression in her eyes. He’d never seen it from the outside, but he remembered what it felt like inside. To watch the world and never actually see it, to only be distantly connected to his own body because he’d taken a little trip outside of his own body just to escape what had happened.

 

It might have been over twenty years since he’d felt that, but it wasn’t something he was likely to forget.

 

“Hey, sweetheart,” Dean rasped. God, he’d kill for a glass of water just then. “You’re finally awake. My name’s Dean, how ‘bout yours?”

 

She didn’t answer him, just kept watching him with those empty eyes.

 

“That your mom in there with you?” Dean tried and still got silence for a response. But there was some light coming back to her, like she was drifting slowly back into the here and now, and Dean felt like an ass for doing that to her. She shouldn’t have to experience this kind of shit. Shouldn’t have to remember it if she didn’t want to.

 

Shifting so he was sitting cross legged facing the other cage, Dean stifled a groan when his muscles protected the movement. His arms and legs ached, and his back burned when the muscles stretched, but it was throbbing head that kicked up the biggest stink. He was pretty sure his brain was trying to crawl out one of his ears – _concussion, pretty bad one at that_ – as the world tilted with his movements.

 

“Don’t feel much like talkin’, do ya, sweetheart? That’s okay,” he reassured her. “You don’t have to talk if you don’t wanna.”

 

Dean rubbed absently at the side of his face, dried blood flaking off under his fingers. He hadn’t heard any sounds coming from upstairs since he woke up. Made him wonder if whoever had taken them was actually living here or just using the place. Or maybe this was just a secondary building on a larger piece of land. Dean had no idea where they were, or how long he’d been gone, so just about anything was possible.

 

Though, the fact that his stomach didn’t feel like an empty balloon told him that it couldn’t have been that long ago.

 

“Stranger.”

 

Dean’s head snapped back around to the other cage.

 

Sitting up, the kid looked worse off then she had lying in that blood. Some of her hair was pulled off to the side, stiff with drying sticky blood, clothes blood and dirt smeared. There were bruises on her upper arms, and Dean caught sight of what might been scrapes creeping up her right leg.

 

Ignoring the twist in his gut, Dean leaned forward, resting his elbows on his thighs, hands held passively in front of him. “Talkin’ ‘bout me?”

 

When the girl nodded, Dean fought back the smile that wanted to split his face. It would scare the girl and bunch up the cut on his temple. Instead he made a serious face, which pulled the cut and burned and started bleeding a little. “Your mom teach you never to talk to strangers,” he stated, nodding just a little. “That’s a good thing to make sure you don’t do. Can get you into all kinds of trouble.”

 

She went back to watching him, sucking on her thumb again.

 

“Me being a stranger’s gonna make it kinda hard for us to talk, ain’t it?” Dean asked. When the kid nodded again Dean went on with a considering tone. “How ‘bout… how ‘bout I tell you about me? That way you’ll get to know me and we won’t be such strangers anymore. That sound good to you?”

 

She took her time considering his proposal. And Dean had to give the kid’s mother serious credit. Most kids probably would have caved by that point. She looked back at her mother’s body before turning back to Dean, nodding slowly.

 

“Well, all right then.” And he had no idea where he was supposed to start. Cause he was stuck in a fucking cage God knew where and all he really wanted to do was get the hell out and back to Sam.

 

Sam.

 

“Well, you know my name’s Dean,” he started. “I got a little brother called Sam. Well, he isn’t really little anymore. He went and got himself stretched or something ‘cause he’s taller then me now, but he’s still younger then me,” Dean rambled, letting the words find their own way out. “My mom died when I was little, probably about your age. And my dad, well he died a few years ago.” _And so did Sammy, but I made a deal with a demon and got him back_.

 

“Let’s see…” Licking his dry lips with an equally dry tongue Dean struggled with thinking of something else to tell the kid. “I drive a 1967 Impala; she’s the prettiest thing you’ll ever see. Still a total bad ass even though she’s over forty years old.

 

“Actually I was born in that car. Grew up in her back seat too,” he added thoughtfully.

 

Pulling himself back to the present, Dean asked, “That enough about me for you to tell me your name?”

 

When she shook her head, Dean sighed and smiled at her. “Well hell, what else can I tell you?” Dean thought about it for a minute. What else _could_ he tell her? Most of his past was violence and blood, and what wasn’t was still about hunting or about sex. And he wasn’t going to tell some little kid about how he’d lost his virginity in the back seat of the Impala when he was seventeen.

 

“I was born January 24, 1979 in Lawrence, Kansas.” _I drive around the country killing demons and getting rid of ghosts by digging up the bodied and burn the bones. Got a police record longer then you are tall…_And then he just began listing stuff. He wasn’t used to this. Sam would probably have an easier time talking with the kid. Dean wasn’t used to talk about himself.

 

“My favourite colour is green, favourite food is pizza, but if coffee weren’t a liquid that would be my favourite.” Dean scratched at his chin and pulled a face. “I’ve traveled all over the country. Seen both oceans a few times actually. I’m pretty good with cars, I had to fix up the Impala a few years go when it got hit by a truck. That was right about the same time that my dad died.”

 

And Dean was stuck again. There wasn’t a whole hell of a lot about him to get to know. Except that he couldn’t tell her about most of it. She wouldn’t understand. Or at least he didn’t think she would. Dean considered the kid staring him with a dirty face. “You know what a Hunter is, sweetheart?” Dean asked carefully. “And not the kind that goes into the forest to shoot at deer and animals.”

 

She looked at her mother’s body again before turning back to him. When she nodded carefully in response, Dean was left wondering what she’d been told about Hunters from her mother. “That’s what I am. I’m a Hunter,” he told her.

 

Something came alive in her eyes. She’d been listening to him before, but now it was like he’d become the center of the entire world. Dean remembered Sammy looking at him like that when they were younger. “Me and my brother, Sammy, we’re both Hunters. We hunt ghosts and demons and evil things that hurt people.”

 

She pulled her thumb from her mouth and asked, “Like the bad man that’s took us?”

 

Dean choked on his answer, a bubble of laughter getting tangled up with a lump of tears. “Yeah, sweetheart. Like the bad man that took us.”

 

When she didn’t stick her thumb right back into her mouth, Dean tried asking another question, “Do you know what the bad man is, sweetheart?”

 

It was something every Hunter knew. While the adults could give better details about things that had happened, they were useless when it came to accepting or seeing the supernatural around them. Their minds had been so firmly trained to ignore the things that went bump in the night that it usually took something fairly traumatic happening right before their eyes before they might _maybe_ be able to accept it. But kids were different.

 

Kids could see the world for what it was. Their minds hadn’t been bleached and trained to ignore the things creeping in the dark. Their instincts were sharper, more intoned with the natural world that hides from the light of day.

 

She shook her head. “Sticky.”

 

“Sticky?” Dean responded in confusion. “Like he’s all slimy and stuff?”

 

She shook her head again. “’s face looks sticky.”

 

Before Dean could ask for further clarification, he heard the outside door open upstairs, feet treading heavily across the floor. Moving towards the door at the top of the stairs.

 

He was torn between wanting to shout out and draw whoever’s attention to him. Try to get some help and free himself. And keeping his mouth shut tight. It only took one breath to keep his mouth closed. The smell of new death was still sharp in the air. Whatever or whoever was creeping around upstairs was probably the same thing that had killed the kid’s mother.

 

Dean didn’t want to end up dead.

 

Not like that.

 

Except the door was opening, and sun light was spilling down the stairs, pooling on the floor and part way up a wall.

 

A second later and there were feet tromping quickly down the stairs and a tall man came into sight. He smiled brightly when he saw Dean awake and sitting up in his cage. “Great!” the guy cheerfully greeted. “You’re already awake. I wasn’t sure how much longer you’d been kept under with the amount of tranquilizers I had to give you.”

 

The guy had a neatly trimmed goatee and short sort of curly hair. He was dressed in a pair of blue jeans that weren’t new but weren’t old either and a blank grey t-shirt. He was neat and clean, not a spot of dirt or dust on him. Even his boots didn’t leave dirt behind.

 

“Just how long have I been out, anyway?” Dean asked, trying for casual.

 

The guy grinned brightly in response. Dean wanted to punch that smile off his face. “Assuming you just woke up today, you’ve been out for two days now. I was starting to get worried. But now that you’re awake, we can begin.”

 

Dean wasn’t given a chance to response. The guy made a casual flick of his wrist and Dean was suddenly struggling to drag air into his lungs. It felt like something heavy had landed on his chest, keeping him from taking a proper breath. Dimly, Dean heard the guy stepping forward. But it wasn’t until he was standing over the cage that Dean was even really aware that the guy had moved.

 

“Sorry about that, man,” the guy said. “But you fought me pretty hard when I took you originally and I don’t want to chance giving you anymore tranquilizers. I didn’t realize I’d given you a concussion when I gave them to you originally,” he continued with what was probably a sincerely apologetic tone. Dean didn’t really give a fuck. The guy was pulling a small ring of keys from his pocket and was unlocking his cage, still talking.

 

“You don’t actually have to be awake for the work we need to do,” he was telling Dean. “But the drugs interfere with the rituals. They’d make all the work for nothing if I had to knock you out with them again.”

 

Dean’s body tensed and coiled, waiting for the moment that the door opened. Because, fuck, even if he couldn’t breath, there was no way Dean wasn’t going to just not fight the son of a bitch. Besides, except for curses, spells and magic only lasted as long as the caster was still alive. Dean just had to break this bastard’s neck and he’d be able to breathe again.

 

“Actually, it would probably be better for you to not be awake during the first few parts of the ritual,” the guy was saying. He’d pulled the key from the lock and jammed them back into his pocket before unlatching the cage door. “It’s kind of distracting to me when the subjects are awake, struggling and making a mess of things. And I need to concentrate on the work.”

 

The guy lifted the door of the cage and Dean launched himself.

 

He didn’t make it that far.

 

It was like hitting a wall and getting stuck in it. He couldn’t move forward, and something was keeping him from falling back into his cage. Except he could breathe now. The weight had been lifted from his chest as soon as he’d hit that invisible wall.

 

“Telekinesis,” the guy chirped. Honest to god, _he chirped_. “Picked up that little talent in New Mexico.” Still smiling, the guy backed away from Dean’s cage a few steps. “Had it long enough now that I don’t even have to point at the things I want to move. Can even lift and move things three or four times heavier than I am.”

 

“Come on,” the guy said, like Dean really had a choice in the matter as it was. “Now that the drugs have worn off, I want to get started. No time to waste you know!”

 

They stopped in the middle of the room, before they reached the door in the wall that obviously led to another room. Dean forced his jaw and lips and tongue to work together to form words, practically squeezing them out his mouth. “What’s the hold up? Thought we were workin’ on a schedule or somethin’.”

 

“Oh, we are,” the other man answered in that same cheerful voice. “But I’m thinking that you shouldn’t be awake for the first few parts of this ritual. Don’t want you to distract me while I’m working. We’d have to start all over again then.”

 

“Promise not to make noise,” Dean rasped. The longer he was hanging there the tighter a hold seemed to be. Like the guy was being forced to exert more effort into keeping Dean floating and under his control. Dean watched as sweat started to break out on the other man’s upper lip.

 

“That’s mighty helpful of you,” he told Dean, smiling. “But it’s not really the noises and the wriggling that are going to distract me. It’s how loud your mind’s going to get when we start.” Nodding as if he’d come to some kind of decision he smiled apologetically at Dean. “Think I’m going to make you sleep through the first few parts,” he added.

 

Between one heart beat and the next, the world went dark again.

 

~*~*~

 

Dean was getting really sick of getting knocked out and then waking up trapped some place new.

 

This time he was in the other room. Or what Dean assumed was the other room. He couldn’t be sure how long he’d been out this time.

 

Candles were the only source of light in the room. There must have been over a hundred of them in the room, but Dean couldn’t see all of them. Just the ones lining the wall in front of him. He was bound to a tilting table, strapped securely enough that even twitching was out of the question. The gag in his mouth tasted like new leather though.

 

So thoughtful of the bastard.

 

Dean struggled a little against his bindings. Moving brought three things to his attention. One, he couldn’t really move because there wasn’t any give in the straps holding him to the table; two, he had about a dozen shallow cuts on his abdomen and a couple dozen acupuncture needles with little bits of inscents burning on them scattered all over his body; and three, he was completely naked under the leather straps.

 

Someone started chanting behind him. And for a moment Dean stopped trying to get free, listening for words he might understand so he could figure out what the fuck was happening to him. That was right about the time a low grade panic started in his chest, because he didn’t recognize the language. None of the words sounded familiar. And Dean might not have had Sam’s talent with dead languages, but even Dean could pick out most dead or ancient languages when he heard them.

 

The bastard came back into view, cradling a shallow wooden bowl in his hands. He was just as naked as Dean was under the open cloak he was wearing. He raised the bowl over his head and then lowered it back down so he could dip fingers into the clear, thick liquid inside.

 

Dean flinched a little when the other man touched him with his slick fingers, drawing in a sharp breath through his nose, catching the sent of oil under the smell of melting wax – _olive oil mixed with herbs and some kind of spice_. The guy drew some kind of pattern on his forehead, another over his heart, and a third just above his belly button but between the shallow cuts.

 

The chanting continued even when the guy stepped away from Dean, moving behind him again. Probably to his alter, Dean decided, because he came back around with something clutched tightly in his fist.

 

The chanting got louder, the unfamiliar words coming faster. And Dean could feel his heart racing to catch up to the rhythm and beat of words. His body straining a little against the straps holding him in place, except he wasn’t actually moving. He was holding himself so very still, waiting to see what was going to happen when the chanting stopped.

 

The other man raised his closed fist, opening it so Dean could see what he was holding.

 

Bone ashes.

 

He was holding bone ashes.

 

Dean started to struggle in earnest then. Because whatever kind of ritual needed bone ash was the kind of ritual Dean didn’t want touching him. That was old magic, something older and darker than the shit most witches used. This was the kind of shit even demons didn’t fuck around with, on the same level as blood magic.

 

Dean had no idea what ritual was being used on him or against him, and he didn’t give a fuck. Because his gut told, fucking shouted at him, that something bad was going to happen when that little pile of ash touched him, touched the oil on his skin, got into the shallow cuts on his stomach. And whatever bad thing happened, there wouldn’t be any taking it away.

 

Shouting around his gag, Dean tried cursing, the muffled name of Christ, called on God and the Devil. Screamed for Sam under the gag when those didn’t work.

 

And then the chanting stopped and he blew the ashes on Dean.

 

For a second, just one second, Dean’s heart stopped and he waited for whatever was going to happen. And for that one second, Dean thought it hadn’t worked. Whatever the guy had done had failed, that he’d fucked something up and Dean wasn’t going to –

 

Every nerve in his body sang with agony.

 

Pain lacing through him with no staring point and no end. It was everywhere – stretching in his bones, creeping through his muscles, racing in his blood, washing over his skin.

 

Dean couldn’t think around it.

 

Couldn’t see anything beyond the flashes of white bursting in front of his eyes.

 

Couldn’t get air in past the pain.

 

And then merciful darkness took him back into her sweet embrace.

 

~*~*~

 

He was back in his clothes when he woke up next. The blood and oil washed off.

 

He also, wasn’t alone in his cage either.

 

There was a warm and bony bundle of little girl tucked tightly against his side.

 

Dean raised his head enough to see that the kid was dressed in clean clothing and the blood had been washed out of her hair and off her body. There was a sick twist in his gut when he realized that the bastard must have been the one to wash her, and touch her.

 

Taking in a sharp breath when he tried to move Dean noticed that the mess of blood and death were missing. Rolling his head, Dean looked to the other cage to see what had been done.

 

The body was gone and the floor had been scrubbed clean.

 

Dean wondered how long he’d been passed out this time. Because it would have taken more than just a few hours to get all that blood off the floor. Not to mention getting the body out of the cage and up the stairs. And he’d slept through all of it.

 

Sighing, Dean felt sleep tugging at him again.

 

Turning his body, Dean wrapped himself around the little girl sleeping next to him. Make his body a shield before fighting back the need to sleep.

 

Moving that much made some of the shallow cuts on his stomach open again. His chest felt tight, like it was suddenly two sizes too small. As though there was something inside him stretching, looking for an empty space to fill.

 

Ignoring the discomforts, Dean glanced down at the little girl to see that she was now awake and staring up at him with her thumb back in her mouth.

 

“Hey, kiddo,” he said softly. His voice rasping from his raw throat. “You know how long ago it was that the bas- bad man took me outta my cage?”

 

“Yesterday,” she told him. Though it sounded more like _yath-er-ay_ around her thumb. And it took Dean a moment to figure out what she’d said. Ever since Sammy had stopped sucking his thumb Dean hadn’t needed to translate words like that.

 

Dean hummed absently and tried to figure out how many days he’d been missing now. Three days at least, he decided, possibly four.

 

“Think it’d be all right to tell me your name now, sweetheart?” Dean asked next, trying to distract himself from wondering what Sam was doing now. What he’d been doing since Dean had left. Had he gone looking for Dean when he didn’t come back the next morning? Or had Sam assumed that Dean had made good on his threat and simply left him there? Because Dean refused to think that Sam might be dead.

 

“Sage,” she said, drawing Dean’s attention back to her.

 

“Sage, huh? That’s a pretty name.” When she didn’t move away from him, but actually snuggled in closer to his chest, Dean closed his eyes and wrapped an arm around her little body. “So how old are you, Sage?”

 

“Four,” she spoke into his chest.

 

They were quiet after that. Dean stuck on the idea that the little girl tucked against his chest was had been cuddling against her mother’s dead body the day before. He didn’t really want to think about what else might have happened to her in the few weeks since she’d been taken from her home. But his mind wandered down that path anyways.

 

Anything could have happened to her. Whatever the bastard had done to Dean he might already have done to her. Had already obviously been done to her mother. And Dean couldn’t help but wonder if Sage had seen that. If she’d been taken into that other room and forced to watch as her mother was tortured and then killed.

 

She poked his belly button, causing Dean’s entire body to jerk in response, when his stomach growled at him. She’d been quiet for so long, Dean had thought she’d gone back to sleep. She poked his belly button again forcing a small huff of laughter from him - _ and fuck it wasn’t fair that he was ticklish like that… he was an adult, he should have grown out of ticklishness the same way he finally left puberty behind._

 

“Yeah, I’m kinda hungry,” Dean admitted since that seemed to be the question she was asking. “Haven’t eaten in a few days. And the last meal I had was half a bag of chips with Sammy.”

 

Sage was wiggling out of his hold then. Pushing at his arm and getting to her feet before moving to the other end of the cage and picking something up. When she turned around, Dean saw she was holding a Tupperware container in her hands.  

 

She held the container out to him when she came back. “Food,” she announced, thrusting it at him again.

 

Dean struggled to sit up and reach for the container. “Where’d this come from?” he asked her, eying the plastic in his hands.

 

“Bad man,” she answered, crawling on to his lap and resting against his chest.

 

Dean suppressed the hiss of breath and wince when she rubbed his t-shirt against the cuts on his stomach. It hurt, but not enough to make him push her away. If she felt safe with him, then he’d give her the comfort she needed.

 

He considered the Tupperware container in his hands another moment before saying, more to himself than to the kid, “Don’t know that I’d trust whatever the bastard made to eat.”

 

Dean pulled the lid off and looked inside. It was cold, plain oatmeal.

 

Good and healthy food that would help build up strength and easy to disguise poisons and drugs. “Did you eat any of this, Sage?”

 

She nodded against his chest.

 

“And the bad man didn’t put anything in it?”

 

“Let me make it,” she told him, sleep thick in her voice.

 

When his stomach growled again, Dean sighed and used his fingers to scoop some of the cold food into his mouth. It tasted like shit, but it was still food in his stomach.

 

~*~*~

 

Sage was gone.

 

It was the first thing he thought when he woke up the next morning.

 

Sitting up, reaching for a knife that wasn’t there under a pillow he didn’t have, Dean looked frantically around the room for the missing girl, shouting, “Sage!”

 

He caught sight of her standing on a chair which had been moved up against a post, reaching for his leather coat that was hanging there. She wobbled a little and turned to _shush_ him before reaching up again to tug at his coat.

 

Dean swallowed his heart back down into his chest and waited for her to pull his coat down and climb off the chair. Watched as she pushed it back across the floor under the stairs where she’d probably gotten it from in the first place. When she came back to the cage, dragging the coat behind her, Dean watched as she slipped between the bars of the cage.

 

“Does the he know you can get out of the cage like that?” Dean asked, accepting his coat when she handed it to him.

 

She shook her head and crawled back into his lap, shivering a little against him. Dean wrapped his coat around her, rubbing his hands over her back and arms. The basement was warm there was no reason for her to be cold unless she was in shock. Delayed shock, probably from her mother’s death, or whatever the bastard might have done to her while Dean had been passed out.

 

“Have you tired to run away?” he asked her.

 

“Can’t reach,” was all she said.

 

Glancing over to the work table with all the tools hanging from pegs on the wall, Dean considered getting Sage to sneak over and see if she couldn’t find him something to pick the lock with. Except Dean couldn’t see anything that would be helpful. Needle nose pliers and a slotted screwdriver just weren’t going to cut it. And it would be a little obvious what he was doing if he tried to file some of the bars loose on his cage.

 

He was stuck there. No way out, no way to get word to Sam that he was alive, and no way to find out if Sam was even looking for him. Fuck he hated this. Hated feeling this helpless. Because the bastard would come back and use his mojo on Dean and Dean wouldn’t be able to stop him.

 

He didn’t want to die in a fucking cage.

 

Once was plenty enough for him.

 

Shifting, Dean wrapped his arms more comfortably around the kid on his lap. “Did the bad man get your dad when he took you from your home?” Dean asked as gently as he could.

 

Sage shook her head against his chest. “Dead b’fore that.”

 

“You got any family waiting for you back home?”

 

“All dead,” Sage whispered, muffled by the leather of his coat.

 

Dean closed his eyes and banged his head against the bars behind him. Kid was alone in this. No one waiting for her, no one to go home to. No home left now that the bastard had taken it away.

 

Dean was once more interrupted from his thoughts when the outer door upstairs crashed open, and the heavy tread of foot steps tromped over the floor. Sage tensed up in his arms, little fingers curling into the material of his t-shirt, gripped tightly in a little fist.

 

He rubbed useless soothing circles on her back and arms. It did little good when Dean’s entire body was tensed and coiled, ready for a fight, adrenaline kicking through his system.

 

Dean watched passively as the bastard came down the basement stairs. He was wearing the same boots, another pair of blue jeans, and this time he had a plain navy t-shirt on.

 

“Hey there,” the bastard greeted them in his sickly cheerful tone. “Glad to see you’re already up. Did you sleep well last night?”

 

Dean could never understand why crazy people always wanted to have a conversation with the people they kidnapped. It wasn’t like Dean was grateful for being taken, or like they were going to best buds when this was all over. One of them would be dead and Dean was determined that he wasn’t going to end up in a little pot of ashes or a shallow grave.

 

“’Bout as well as can be expected,” Dean answered conversationally. This wouldn’t be the first crazy person he’d humoured. “Would have been better with a real bed, you know.”

 

The other guy chuckled a little, moving towards the other room. “Yeah, the floor doesn’t have much give to it. Sorry about that,” he called when he disappeared into the other room. “There wasn’t really enough room in this place for me to build some larger cages.”

 

Dean waited for the other guy to come out of the other room. But when a few minutes passed and he didn’t come back out, Dean raised his voice. “So, I never did catch your name, man.”

 

A second later the bastard stuck his head out the door, grinning. “Well, damn. I forgot about the introductions. Name’s Clayton Reynolds. It’s right nice to meet you.”

 

“Like wise,” Dean responded pulling a smile out from somewhere. “I’m Dean, by the way.”

 

The guy laughed and disappeared into the other room again. “Oh, I already know that!” he called back. “Got your wallet from your pocket when I picked you up. Course, the question is more what your last name is. There were a bunch of cards with different names on them. Thought for a little while that you’d grabbed the wrong wallet when you left that bar. Until I found your driver’s license in it.”

 

 “You got my necklace with my wallet up there?” Dean asked, trying to keep his tone conversational.

 

“Sure do!” Clayton called back. “Same with your ring, bracelets, and watch. Even that flash you had the water in. Though, I don’t know what you were doing with all those weapons on you, man. Seriously, six knives and a gun with two spare clips?”

 

“Got a dangerous job,” Dean answered. “Don’t go anywhere unarmed. Be like tempting fate or something.”

 

Clayton came out of the other room a smiled a little. “Fair enough. Every job has its share of risks. But I still can’t figure out what the bag of salt was for. That’s what’s really stumping me.” Dean watched as the other man leaned casually against the wall next to the door. “See, I understand the two decks of matches and the lighter, the condoms, and even the little packets of lube. But what were you going to use the salt for?”

 

“All part of the job, man,” Dean explained. “I’m a Hunter, see. Salt, fire, and pure iron are the best stuff for dealing with just about any supernatural creepy crawly that tries to pick a fight.”

 

“Huh,” he said, considering Dean’s words. “Never heard of Hunters before. But then again, up until two years ago, I thought I was the only one who could do magic and stuff. So what’s a Hunter do?”

 

Dean shrugged a little, felt Sage press a little tighter to his chest. He tried to make his movements just as casual as his words, not wanting to draw Clayton’s attention to the little girl hiding under his coat. “Hunt and kill evil things mostly. You know, ghosts and demons, werewolves, fey creatures… Stuff like that.”

 

Clayton nodded and something shifted in his expression before he pushed away from the wall. “Well, enough with the conversation now. We’ve got some work to get done.”

 

Dean tensed when he felt that invisible hold tighten around him. “Don’t trust me to go quietly?” Dean forced out.

 

Clayton shrugged again, pulling the keys from his pocket. “You seem like a nice guy, Dean. But remember I found you with six knives and a gun. If you know how to use them, I’ve gotta assume you know how to use your fists.”

 

Dean waited until Clayton had gotten him out of the cage before he started to push against that invisible hold. “Mind if I ask what it is we’re doing?”

 

“Don’t see the harm in it,” Clayton told him. Dean felt the hold get a little tighter as he tried to move against it. “Like I said, I thought I was the only one who could do magic and stuff. Wasn’t until I stumbled into a psychic’s little tea shop in North Carolina that I found someone else like me.” Sweat was starting to bead on Clayton’s upper lip as they moved into the other room. “Didn’t take much longer before I figured out how to find others like me and then take their gifts. Found this ritual in an Occult shop in California and found out I could make myself stronger by binding the souls of other gifted people to me.”

 

The hold on Dean got even tighter on him, cutting off his ability to speak, fighting to just keep his ribs expanding. “That was almost three years ago now.” Dean kept pushing, kept struggling against the hold Clayton had on him, and watched as the other man’s face became flushed and sweat was popping up on his forehead. “All I had to do was strip away the barriers between the mind and the soul, and there was suddenly this impossibly deep well of power I could touch.

 

“And that’s what we’re doing. I’m stripping away the last of the barriers between you and your soul. Once they’re gone, I’ll perform the last ritual, bind your soul to me, and then kill you.”

 

~*~*~

 

Dean ended up back in his cage again.

 

There weren’t any black holes in his memory this time. Dean knew what had happened, could remember in vivid details what had happened to him and how it had felt. Aside from the slight burn of fresh shallow cuts on his chest everything in him felt like it had been twisted and knotted, stretched and pulled near the breaking point.

 

The tight feeling in his chest had stretched to encompass most of his body, like his skin were two sizes too small for everything, pushing the seams.

 

Curled up on his side, Dean could still feel the oils on his skin mixing with the fresh blood. Clayton hadn’t bothered to clean him up this time. Instead, just tossed him back into the cage and took the stairs two at a time when he went back up.

 

Sage was sitting in the corner of the cage, huddled inside of his jacket, just watching him.

 

He just wanted to sleep. Wanted to close his eyes and wake up to find all of this was just a new and twisted kind of nightmare. Wanted to close his eyes and open them again with Sammy wrapped around him, breathing into the back of his neck.

 

He was so sick of being the victim. Tired of constantly having to be rescued from situations like this.

 

Dean wasn’t sure when he’d actually fallen asleep, only that when he opened his eyes again, Clayton was coming back into the basement, keys dangling from his fingers.

 

When he saw that Dean was awake, he smiled to him. “Thought I’d give you a bit of a rest today, Dean. You’ve managed to surpass my expectations, enduring the first twp rituals so close together like that.”

 

“So what are you doing here then?” Dean asked, his throat throbbing. “Hey can I get some water?”

 

“Oh! Sure,” Clayton said, moving towards the other room.

 

He came back with a couple bottles of water. Setting them just outside the cage, Clayton kept just out of reach. Not that Dean could have willed his body to do much of anything at the moment. Just reaching for the bottles of water left him feeling exhausted.

 

“If we’re taking a break what are you doing down here?” Dean asked once he’d finished half of the first bottle of water.

 

“Just came down to see if I could get the kid to come upstairs and play outside a little,” Clayton told him. “It’s not good for a kid her age to be locked up inside like this. Kids need lots of sunlight and space to run around and grow up.”

 

Dean frowned a little. The crazy bastard sounded honestly concerned and worried about Sage. “She slept in a pool of her mother’s blood after you killed her, man,” Dean told him. “I don’t think she’s really going to want to go anywhere with you after that.”

 

Clayton shrugged a little. “She’s going to have to get used to it,” he said mater of fact. “I’m not giving her up. I’ve already started the rituals with her, but they have to be done more slowly because of her age. But she’s going to be a very sweet addition.”

 

“How long you planning to keep her around?” Dean asked around the lip of the bottle of water. The tightness in his chest finally stopped trying to push out, instead it was like something was slithering just under his skin while he waited for Clayton to answer him.

 

“A few more weeks,” was the offhanded response. All of his attention was for Sage, who was sleeping curled up in the far corner of the cage buried under Dean’s coat. “I had to do the ritual more slowly. But once I’ve killed you, I can use your ashes to finish the ritual with her.”

 

The slithering stopped, coiled deep in the center of Dean’s chest at that. Clayton stepped towards the cage, and Dean felt that invisible hold close around him. Except this time Dean knew how to beat it. His body might be one giant source of pain, but Hunting had taught him how to ignore it.

 

Dean waited until the lock clicked open. Waiting until Clayton had started to pull the door up before he threw everything into breaking the hold on him – t_here was no fucking way Dean was going to let himself be killed, get himself bound into oblivion and have his body used to destroy some kid –_ threw his body and mind at those invisible bonds, forcing them to stretch and move and accommodate him. White spots exploded in his field of vision when Clayton focused his energies back to Dean.

 

When that hold threatened to crush him, Dean reached inside of himself, going as deep as he could get, reached into that dark cold place with hands he couldn’t actually feel and grabbed hold of the slithering, stretching mass in his chest and dragged it up into the light.

 

He had no idea what the fuck he was doing, if it would work. No idea what it was he was calling upon ever reserve of strength and will that he had, forced it into being and _fucking owned_ it. And for a moment Dean didn’t think it was going to be enough. There were shades of grey blurring his peripheral vision, shifting and moving against the back drop of the too clean basement.

 

And then Clayton was backing away from the cage, his eyes wide and terrified and Dean could suddenly breath and move again. Taking a quick glance around to clear his vision, he realized that those grey spots he’d seen creeping in towards him hadn’t just been his mind losing consciousness but actual ghosts. Except not really.

 

He watched them a moment longer, wondering if they were going to turn on him. Watched until he realized that they were all heading towards Clayton. Creeping closer and gaining substance with each beat of his heart.

 

“You need to leave,” someone said behind him.

 

Dean’s head snapped around to catch sight of Sage’s mother, the woman from his dream, the dead body in the other cage. Except she wasn’t so dead looking right then. Actually, except for the fact that she was slightly transparent and put together in shades of grey, she looked very much alive to Dean.

 

“What’s happening?” he demanded.

 

Taylor looked down to him, tilting her head to one side. “You call us, Dean. You broke his hold over us, giving us a freedom we haven’t felt since before we died.” She looked away from Dean, back to Clayton who’d been back up against a wall and was batting uselessly at the shades.

 

“This is the reason why we accepted our deaths, Dean,” Taylor whispered. And it took a moment for Dean to realize that her lips weren’t moving. “We knew what was going to happen to us. We let our blood be spilt to make you.”

 

Dean’s head began to throb just before Clayton started screaming. Looking over, Dean couldn’t see through the shades anymore. They were no longer transparent and Dean couldn’t see what they were doing.

 

“Remember, Dean,” Taylor told him, stepping through to cage, stepping through him. “You don’t need to believe in a deity to become a piece on the game board. Now take Sage and run. We’ll hold him for as long as we can, but we’re running out of time.”

 

Dean didn’t hesitate once Taylor’s shade joined the others surrounding Clayton. Just reached over to the kid huddled in the corner of the cage and snatched her up.

 

She grabbed hold of him, little fingers clutching the material of his t-shirt. Dean pressed her head into his shoulder and climbed out of the cage and made for the stairs. Taking them two at a time, he burst through the door at the top into a sun lit hallway.

 

The outside door was just down the hall. Freedom a couple dozen feet away. Clayton’s scream grew louder and more frantic behind them when Dean spotted his stuff sitting on a side table near the door. He grabbed his wallet, gun, the switch blade, and his jewellery from the table, shoving everything into pockets.

 

He could still hear Clayton screaming behind them when he pushed the front door open and stepped out into the sun light, running down the porch steps and tearing down the driveway.

 

He pushed the aches and pains his body sent up to the back of his mind, but he couldn’t really ignore the way his head throbbed, the way it felt like some part of him were stretching out behind him, like he’d left some part of himself behind in that basement and he could feel it pulling at him the further away he ran from it. But he didn’t have time to give it much thought. Just forced it as far back as he could and concentrated on putting one foot in front of the other.

 

++++

 

 

 

 


	2. Chapter 2

**Part Two**

 

 

 

Dean tilted his head up to the bright sunlight, eyes shut tight, trying to catch some of the warmth. And even though he could feel the weak heat on his skin it wasn’t sinking in. He had goose bumps creeping up his bare arms every time a breeze worked its way down the road.

 

Dean was ready to just drop his ass down next to the side of the road. He had a headache that was threatening to cause his head to implode under the pressure. Everything hurt and ached in a numb sort of way, like he’d been worked over with a thick phone book. And it didn’t matter what he did, he couldn’t seem to get warm.

 

They had been moving the better part of the day. And even after Dean had gotten them back onto a road after cutting through a few fields and a small grove of trees, they hadn’t been passed by so much as a wandering cow. He had no idea where they were, or in which direction the nearest tiny piece of civilization was.

 

Aside from a brief break he’d taken closer to noon, Dean hadn’t stopped moving. He knew that if he stopped moving then Clayton Reynolds was going to find them. And nothing would save them then. So Dean did the best he could to push his discomforts out of his mind and put one foot in front of the other.

 

~*~*~

 

Dean wasn’t sure if he were seeing things.

 

The sun was just starting to kiss the horizon when the gas station came into view at the bottom of a hill. There was a car parted around back, power and phone lines running in from a cross street. Hope swelled in his chest when the sign lights flickered on to attract customers.

 

Dean’s eyes practically burned in relief. He wanted to fucking jump and whoop but restrained himself to nothing more than slightly hysterical laughter. Sage had her head tucked against Dean’s throat and he didn’t want to scare her by losing it.

 

Dean lengthened his steps, wanting to reach the gas station and its land line telephone as quickly as it was humanly possible. His cell phone had been destroyed, probably when he’d been taken. And just down the hill there was a phone he could use to call Sammy.

 

A bell jingled just about the door when Dean shoved it open.

 

The kid behind the counter looked up when they came in, feet dropping off the counter with a loud thud. "Holy shit, man," the kid said, standing up.

 

Sage pressed her face into his shoulder, curling more tightly into his chest, fingers clutching at the material of his shirt. Dean ran a soothing had up and down her back. She just tried to curl in tighter, making herself as small as possible.

 

"Can I use your phone?" Dean asked. His voice sounded raw, even to him, his throat sore and dry.

 

The kid nodded a little too hard. "Yeah," he said, pulling a cordless handset from the base on the back counter. "Hey, did you guys have an accident or something? You kind of look like death warmed over, man."

 

Dean shook his head and reached for the phone. He punched in Sam's number and waited for his brother to answer.

 

It didn't take long. Two rings and Sam's voice came over the line. "Hello?"

 

Dean's eyes closed in relief. "Hey, Sammy," he greeted. His knees felt a little weak. Because up until that moment, Dean hadn't been sure that Sam was going to answer the phone. Hadn't known what had happened to his little brother. As talkative as Clayton had been, he hadn't mentioned anything about Sammy.

 

"Jesus Christ, Dean. Where the hell are you?"

 

"I-" Dean looked over to the kid. "Hey, kid, where am I?"

 

The kid rattled off an address and Dean repeated it for Sam, and then listened to his brother curse on the other side of the phone.

 

"I can be there in about an hour and a half," Sam told him. Frustration clear in his voice. "Jesus, fuck, Dean. Where the hell have you been? What happened?"

 

"Not now, Sam," Dean breathed, pleaded. "Just... just come and pick us up."

 

Silence stretched for a moment before Sam asked, "Us?"

 

"Sam," Dean said, warning clear in his voice.

 

"Right. An hour and a half."

 

~*~*~

 

It was actually a little over two hours before Sam got there.

 

The sun had already set, and the kid behind the counter was really starting to get on Dean's nerves.

 

He asked too many questions. Questions Dean didn't know how to answer. But he kept offering to call the police or an ambulance or a tow truck, thinking that they'd been in an accident. Dean kept insisting that they were fine, but he still bought a bottle of aspirin and water for his headache that just seemed to be getting worse with the more the kid talked. Dean just didn't feel up to making friendly chit chat. Didn't feel up to much really.

 

Dean spent a lot of those two hours talking to Sage in a hushed tone. She was still in his arms, having refused to let go when Dean tried to put her down a little while ago. "Sam's my brother," he was telling her again, not really knowing what else to say. "He's coming to get us and we'll go some place safe, sweetheart. I promise."

 

Dean was sitting on the floor, his back to the counter, Sage sitting on his lap, little body tucked so tightly against his chest that Dean could feel the shallow cuts reopening, sluggishly bleeding. He didn't want to stand up - couldn't really find the energy to do it anyway - and give the kid another reason to try and convince Dean to let him call for some help.

 

He was nearly asleep and fighting it, murmuring nonsense words, when he heard the familiar sound of the Impala pulling up.

 

Dean was struggling to get back on to his feet without putting the kid down when Sam practically burst through the door.

 

He hesitated for just a second, staring down at Dean with some mix of relief and terror, before he was striding forward and helping Dean up off the floor. "Fuck, man, you look like shit," Sam breathed.

 

"Took you long enough, Sammy," Dean drawled. "You got everything packed in the trunk?"

 

"Yeah, Dean," Sam answered.

 

He still hadn't let go of Dean's arm, hovering a little too closely. Normally Dean would be pulling away from Sam, putting a little distance between them with a stranger in the room with them. Except, for the first time in what felt like forever, Dean could feel warmth, honest to God warmth, seeping under his skin. Dean just wanted to wrap himself up in Sam and go to sleep, let his brother's body heat suck him into sweet, safe oblivion.

 

"Good," Dean nodded, stepping into Sam, brushing against his brother's body, before continuing to the door.

 

The kid behind them came around the counter to follow them out of the little building that had sheltered Dean for the last few hours. "Hey," the kid called softly over Dean's shoulder. "Hey, look, you should probably get them to a hospital or something," he was saying. "Your brother looks like death warmed over, and I think your niece is in shock."

 

Dean felt Sam's steps falter a little, and Dean was pretty sure the only reason why he knew that was because he was still letting Sam carry some of his weight as they walked. Sam didn't even hesitate in answering, "I probably will. Thanks for looking after them while they waited for me."

 

The kid held the back door of the car open while Sam tried to help Dean get in.

 

Once Dean was settled in the back seat, relaxing for the first time, he tried to will some of the tension out of his body. It was easier said than done because they were sitting still. They had to get moving. They were still too close to where Clayton had been holding them and sooner or later that son of a bitch was going to start looking for them - _if he wasn't already looking_ \- and Dean wanted to be long fucking gone before the bastard decided to come wandering down to the gas station.

 

"Look," Dean could hear the kid speaking to Sam through the closed door. "Head back the way you came, take the second right to get back into town. Hospital is on the other side of town from there. It's the closest one. Only old man Ryker's place out the other way and more back woods than you can shake a stick at."

 

"Thanks again," Sam was saying from the other side of the car. Dean listened as the front door opened and Sam getting in.

 

They were only a few minutes down the road when Sam called to him.

 

Dean forced his eyes open, caught Sam watching him in the rear-view mirror instead of the road. "Do you guys need a hospital, Dean?" Sam asked when he had Dean's attention.

 

Dean shook his head. "No, Sammy. We aren't hurt bad enough to need a hospital." Sleep made his words thick on is tongue, a slight effort to get them out. "Just drive clear into tomorrow. Don't stop in town 'cept to fill 'er up. Want as much distance between us and here as we can get."

 

Sam didn't respond for a moment, just watched Dean carefully in the mirror before he finally nodded.

 

When Dean felt the engine growl louder as Sam gave her more gas, Dean reached over and pulled one of the old army blankets from the floor. He gave it a half hearted shake before sprawling out as best he could on the back seat, Sage still stuck to him like glue, pulling the blanket over them.

 

Dean let the familiar smell and sounds of the Impala lull him into sleep.

 

~*~*~

 

Dean wasn't really sure what time it was when they finally pulled into the parking lot of another shady motel. The sun was riding high in the sky, though, so he figured they'd been driving all night and the better part of the day. And Dean felt nothing but relief to be away that he didn't even bitch about Sammy driving all the way without waking him up for his turn.

 

Dean got the bags out of the trunk while he waited for Sammy to get back from getting them a room. Sage stuck close by him, watching everything he did. Dean had to be careful not to step back into her, not used to having such a tiny person following him around anymore. Sam had out grown trailing Dean when puberty finally paid off and he grew six inches over night.

 

"Hey, kiddo," Dean said when he nearly tripped over the little girl for the third time. "Doing okay at the moment?"

 

She just stared up at him without answering him. And Dean figured that was answer enough -  _she'd just lost her mother, slept next to her dead body, after getting kidnapped by a fucking psycho_. "Ask a stupid question, eh?"

 

Dean hefted the bags into one hand over his shoulder and reached out to take Sage's hand. The kid looked more than a little lost standing next to the Impala in the middle of some random motel parking lot. "We won't be here long," Dean promised them both. Because Dean didn't want to stick around, not when they could put a couple of states between them and Clayton anyway. "We'll just wash up and rest here for the night and we'll back on the road in the morning, okay?"

 

Sage clutched tightly to Dean's hand before she nodded and then turned to look around the place. Dean couldn't help but note the slight crinkle of her nose and looked up to see the over flowing dumpster just at the other end of the parking lot. And Dean hoped that Sam made sure they didn't end up in the room next to that.

 

"You hungry at all?" Dean asked, trying to draw the kid's attention back to him. Because they might be on the out skirts of some unnamed little town in the middle of nowhere, but Dean would bet money that the place also rented rooms by the hour. And there was no way he was going to be the reason the kid saw something she really shouldn't.

 

Sage looked back at him and nodded again.

 

"Still don't feel much like talkin' do you?" he asked without any heat. He didn't really need to see her shake her head to know the answer to that question.

 

If she didn't want to talk, Dean wasn't going to make her. He still remembered after his mother died, how he hadn't wanted to talk, and someone had talked his dad into sending him to see some shrink. Nearly a dozen visits to see that woman and Dean had still refused to talk. He'd started talking eventually.

 

"S'okay," he told her, catching sight of Sam leaving the office with a room key in hand. Looking back down at the little girl, he jiggled her hand a little. "You don't have to talk if you don't want to. But you're gonna have to tell me when you need something. You can whisper to me, okay? So no one else has to hear you. Sound good?"

 

He was rewarded with a small smile. Dean wasn't sure why that fragile little smile landed like a kick to the gut, but it did.

 

"Got us a room," Sam announced when he was close enough. He frowned a little when Sage stepped in closer to Dean, trying to hide behind his leg.

 

Dean nodded and didn't try to drag Sage out from behind him. "Lead the way, Sammy. Think we're both ready for a shower and some food right about now."

 

Sam just sent him a confused look before heading towards the room a few doors down from where they'd parked but a good distance from the dumpster. And Dean was more than a little thankful that Sam wasn't asking the million and one questions Dean was pretty sure were burning on his tongue.

 

Dean dumped the bags on the first bed when they got into the room and headed straight for the bathroom, turning on all the taps and flushing the toilet. Sage followed him and stood shuffling her feet while Dean made sure they were going to have something resembling water pressure to bath and shit with.

 

When they came back into the room, Sam was shutting off the lights and heading for the bags to pull out the salt.

 

"Gotta check to make sure everything works in a place like this," Dean explained. Sam looked up at him when he started speaking. It was a lesson Sam already knew. Something Dean had taught them after John had taught it to him. But Dean wasn't talking to Sam at the moment. "When you stay in places that rent rooms by the hour, you wanna make sure they aren't trying to cheat you."

 

Dean reached out to take one of the salt canisters from Sam and they went about the rest of the room in relative silence. Sage continued to follow him around, stood patiently by when Dean started to mark up the window ledges and vents with runes. They'd started warding the vents when a fucking pixie found it to be the only way into the room.

 

And that had been a fucking nightmare to explain to their father. At least until Dean pointed out, in a rare moment of rebellion, Dean had pointed out that John had missed the vent as an entrance point too. They'd started warding the vents as soon as they'd caught the fucking pixie.

 

Once the room had been properly warded Dean turned towards his brother, watched Sammy putting the salt canisters away in their bags. Sage was standing behind him, little hands clutched in the pant legs of his jeans. "Sammy, I need you to run out to the store and pick up a few things."

 

"Things?" Sam asked, straightening to his full height. Dean couldn't help but notice the way he just didn't acknowledge Sage, who was hiding behind him. _It wasn't like Sammy knew how to deal with little kids anyway... he'd been the baby of the family his entire life, never had to deal with kids younger than him except when he decided to, or for a hunt._

 

"Need you to head into town and pick up some clothes for Sage here and some basics too," Dean told his brother as though it should have been obvious. "And can you pick up some food while you’re out to, man? We are seriously starved."

 

Sam looked as though he wanted to argue with Dean before he left the motel room. But he eventually just scooped up the keys and left the room. Dean waiting until he heard the roar of the Impala's engine leave the parking lot before turning to the little girl standing behind him.

 

"Common," Dean said, heading towards the bathroom. "Let's get a bath run for you so you can get washed up."

 

Sage trailed behind him into the bathroom where Dean pulled the curtain back on the shower and checked the bottom of the tub. Satisfied that it actually clean enough to put a child in, Dean stuck in the plug and started the water running.

 

Sage just stood there, watching him as Dean tested the water on the inside of his wrist. Dean got up and grabbed down a towel and face cloth setting them on the lowered lid of the toilet. He brought over the little soaps and shampoos that came with their room. And it surprised Dean a little that they even had these considering how cheap the room was.

 

"There you go, sweetheart," Dean said, turning the water off and standing up. "You give me a shout if you need anything."

 

Dean left the bathroom, leaving the door slightly ajar behind him and went right for the bags to dig out some fresh clothes for himself, and possibly a t-shirt to put Sage in while they waited for Sammy to get back from the store.

 

He didn't even make it past the first bed before he was being called short.

 

"De!"

 

Dean turned around abruptly and went right back to the bathroom. Because Sage had been refusing to speak since Dean had met the kid. So if she were going to be shouting like that, Dean was going to answer - _even if he hadn't been called De since Sammy was six_.

 

Pushing open the door, Dean poked his head around the corner and looked to where Sage was still standing, never having moved in the first place. She was just staring at the door, waiting for Dean to get back. "What's up, kiddo?"

 

Sage lifted her arms in the air and wiggled her fingers at the ceiling. "Help."

 

Dean sighed softly and went into the bathroom. He knelt down in front of Sage and tugged her shirt up and over her head and tossing the dirty material off to one side. "Your mom used to give you baths?" Dean asked, reaching down to tug off her shoes and socks next.

 

It had been a while since he'd had to bath a little kid. Actually, Caleb's newest rug rat was the last one to get the dubious honour. Dean was pretty good with kids, didn't matter how old or young they were. He could do the whole diaper changing, bottle feeding, colic screaming, and scraped knees. But Dean just couldn't wash a kid without getting himself just a soaked that kid he was trying to clean up. His best work was done with wet wipes and explosive diahrea.

 

"How about this," Dean offered, "I'll stick around, wash out your hair for you, but you gotta take care of everything else, okay?"

 

Sage nodded her acceptance and Dean tossed the rest of her clothing into the same corner as her shirt and shoes. "Okay, in we go," Dean said, picking Sage up and putting her into the bathtub.

 

Sage sat down and waited for him.

 

Dean was floored for a moment with the level of trust and dependence he was once more responsible for providing for. Dean reached onto the counter for the empty ice bucket and filled it with water before dumping it over Sage's head. "You gotta remember though, I haven't had to wash no one's hair that was longer than mine in a real long time," Dean teased.

 

But after a few moments and another small half smile from Sage, Dean had the girls' hair lathered, his fingers rubbing against her scalp, rubbing away the grit of dirt and oil. "Things aren't going to be so bad," Dead said softly into the quiet warmth of the bathroom. "Me and Sammy, we've been doing this since I was about your age. And really, for all that? Not everything in this world is so terrible. There are some really beautiful things out there. And I know it seems like nothing is gonna be good again, but some day you're gonna look back and think _well, it could have been worse_, you know?"

 

Dean rinsed the shampoo out of Sage's hair and repeated the process one more time just to be safe. He didn't think she was actually listening to him, too busy playing with the wash cloth and the little bar of soap, but Dean kept talking anyway. It might not be soothing her but it was comforting him.

 

"I know you don't have any family left," he said softly, working the shampoo into a good lather. "And me and Sammy, well, we're all that's left of ours. And there could be worse things in life than getting stuck with the two of us. I mean, sure Sammy gets real gassy when he eats some kinds of foods and I snore when I have a cold. But you know, you could always end up with a bunch of people who don't even know that this whole other world exists out there. I'm not going to make you end up in a place like there, where you have to hide part of who you are just because no one would believe you even if you told them, showed them, what was really out there.

 

"You can stay here with me and Sammy," Dean promised, rinsing out the shampoo again and pulling some conditioner through the ends. "You can stay with us, and we'll look after you. Won't let anything happen to you here with us. Promise."

 

~*~*~

 

Sam was standing in the middle of the girl section of the kids clothing department looking more than a little lost some twenty minutes after leaving Dean in the motel room. He'd never been surrounded by so much pink and glitter in his life. Sam wasn't even really sure where he should be starting to look for clothes for the girl Dean had brought back with him.

 

How the hell was he supposed to judge size for a girl anyway? He'd never had to shop for anyone except for himself. And even before he'd left, Dean had almost always been the one doing the shopping.

 

Sam felt more than a little out of his depth.

 

He was pretty sure he would have stood there all god damn night if some woman hadn't crashed her cart into his, startling him.

 

"Sorry," Sam murmured at the same time the woman gasped out her own apology.

 

She had a baby hanging from a carrier on her front with a toddler sitting in the buggy and a little girl clinging to the side of the shopping cart. "I didn't see you there," the woman apologized again, pushing her hair from her face. "Got a distracted by the little one," she explained.

 

Sam just nodded, not really sure which kid the woman was talking about, but willing to agree that kids in general could be distracting. "You don't mind me saying, but you're looking kind of overwhelmed."

 

Sam's gaze snapped back to the woman. "It's just... I've... There's so much _pink_," Sam finally said, feeling his cheeks flush a little in embarrassment.

 

The woman just laughed. "We'll you are standing in the girls clothing section. Who you shopping for?"

 

"My niece," Sam's brain quickly supplied. "She's... My Brother is back with her at the motel we're staying in. He sent me out to buy some clothes and stuff for her. Just the basics, actually."

 

The woman frowned at him, rubbing the baby's belly through the material of the carrier. "The basics?"

 

And Sam sort of wished he could take back his words and get a minute or so to come up with a proper cover story. Actually, he wished he wasn't here at all. That Dean had gone out to buy girl clothes for the kid he'd picked up.

 

"Yeah," Sam answered, ducking his head. "My... There was an accident. She lost everything, her home, her mom." Sam shrugged a little and looked back up at the woman. "Hospital called my brother and told him what had happened. She'd never told him about being pregnant when they split."

 

The woman gasped softly at that. "The poor thing," she murmured softly, hand covering her mouth. "Well then," she added, straightening her shoulders and adjusting the baby in the carrier. "You just come with me and I'll help you get those basics for your niece."

 

"It doesn't have to be pink, does it?" Sam asked with a slight smile of relief. Though he was completely serious about the pink question. Didn't really matter if they were keeping the kid or not, Sam was pretty sure his brother would kill him if Sam came back with bags loaded down with pink frilly shit.

 

The woman just laughed at him again. "Believe it or not, but not all girls wear pink." She stuck out her hand and introduced herself then. "Carolyn."

 

"Sam," he said, taking her hand.

 

Finally armed with something like a weapon against all the pink, Sam didn't feel so intimidated by the little girls section of Wal-Mart.

 

~*~*~

 

Dean was coming out of the bathroom, pulling a relatively clean t-shirt over his head when Sam stumbled back into the room with something like a dozen bags in his hands. Sage was sitting in front of the TV, watching some black and white movie on mute.

 

"Dude," Dean said, striding over to help his brother. "I said pick up some basics, not to buy out the store."

 

"I did pick up the basics," Sam snapped. "But, seriously, man. I've never shopped for a girl before and I don't even know her sizes."

 

They set the bags down on one of the beds and Dean started going through them. He'd dressed Sage into his last clean t-shirt, and the damn thing hung on her like a dress. "So what did you end up doing? Just grabbing anything off the racks?"

 

"No, I found a woman shopping with her daughter who looked to be about the same age and height as the kid," Sam informed him. "Pulled out the slightly desperate look and told her a sob story about how I was trying to replace the basics for my niece who'd recently lost her home."

 

Dean was sorting through the bags, separating the items Sam had brought back. "So what did you bring back?"

 

"Couple pairs of jeans, a pair of overalls," Sam began listing. "About a dozen different shirts of various colours. Socks, underwear, cammies, pyjamas, some sweat shirts and hoodies, and a coat. I wasn't sure about her shoe size so I picked up a couple of pairs I thought might fit." Sam was pulling all these things out of the bags as he spoke, and Dean stood back to watch.

 

"What the fuck is a cammie?" he asked.

 

Sam shrugged a little and held a packet of three up for Dean. "The girl version of an undershirt."

 

Dean frowned a little at the package of three cammies in his hand. They did look like the girl version of an undershirt, with the frills and stitching on it. Looking to the rest of the stuff laid out on the bed, Dean figured Sammy had done a good job. It wasn't like either of them really knew what to be buying for a little girl anyway.

 

"Hey, kiddo," Dean called. "Come take a look at the stuff Sammy brought back and lets pick something out to get you dressed in." Dean tossed the cammies back on the bed and glanced down when Sage crept up behind him, as far as she could get from Sam and still see on the bed.

 

Dean ran a hand over her damp hair and asked in a gentler voice, "See anything you like?" They were going to have to try everything on. They didn't have enough space in the car to be traveling with stuff that didn't fit or couldn't be used. He'd take her shopping for whatever they had to replace in the next town they stopped in.

 

Sage pulled the overalls and a long sleeved green shirt off the bed, holding them up to Dean for his approval. "Looks good to me," Dean told her. He grabbed the package of underwear off the bed and tore into the plastic to get a pair free. He couldn't really hold back the dirty feeling he got from handling them and had to wonder just how Sammy had felt going out to actually buy them, sob story or not.

 

"Think you can handle getting into this stuff?" Dean asked.

 

The kid nodded, looking down at the clothing in her hands.

 

"Good," Dean said with no hint of the relief he felt. Bathing the kid was one thing, but even Sammy had been dressing himself by after three. _He might not always have matched, but he'd been able to get into and out of his own clothing by then_. "Go get changed in the bathroom. Give a shout if you need any help."

 

They both watched the kid disappear into the bathroom, the door shutting behind her.

 

"I need to take a look at those cuts on your chest, Dean," Sam said, breaking the silence that had fallen between them.

 

Dean shook his head and moved towards their bags on the other bed. "Don't worry about it, Sam. I cleaned them up before I took a shower. I'm fine."

 

Sam snorted behind him. "Let me check the cuts, Dean," Sam insisted.

 

"Seriously, Sammy," Dean tried, forcing a grin. "I'm fine."

 

"Just show me the fucking cuts, Dean," Sam snapped. The irritation in Sam's voice was enough to make Dean sigh. Because a pissed off Sam just didn't let shit go. He'd keep pestering Dean until he finally gave in and showed him the cuts. It was usually better to just get it all over with, less frustration all around.

 

With an annoyed huff, Dean pulled his shirt up and off, spread his arms out a little and asked, "Want me to make a little spin for you, too?"

 

But Sam wasn't really listening to him. He was looking at the marks on Dean's chests, his eyes serious and concerned. "Jesus, Dean," he said so softly, Dean was pretty sure he wasn't supposed to hear.

 

Sam went to their bags and pulled out one of the first aid kits they kept in case of emergencies. It was the smaller one, thankfully. The larger kit was actually tucked in the bag that held the gear they most often took with them. "I'm going to put some antiseptic cream on them," Sam was saying. "Should probably bandage them, too, to keep them clean."

 

Dean rolled his eyes at Sam's back and glanced down at his chest. Most of the cuts were shallow and would probably heal clean, but a few of them were deep enough that they would leave scars. He couldn't really explain why that knowledge sent a mild wave of relief through him, except that ever since he'd come back from Hell without his scars, Dean had felt more like a stranger in his body than the actual owner of it. Like his history had been erased with those marks and he had to rebuild everything he'd once been.

 

Sam came back at him with a tube of cream that Dean knew was going to sting, a handful of bandages, and the large roll of gauze. Dean was just sitting on the bed to let Sam have his way when the bathroom door opened and Sage stepped out.

 

The buckles on the overalls were dragging on the ground behind the kid as she came towards them. She kept a weary eye on Sam and moved up to Dean's other side. "Have some trouble with the buckles?" Dean asked.

 

She nodded, but wasn't really looking at Dean, instead frowning at Sam as he uncapped the antiseptic cream and squeezed some out on his fingers. She looked back to Dean and pointed at one of the cuts on his chest, her little brows drawn in tightly together.

 

"Yeah, sweetheart," Dean sighed. "I got a little hurt back at that house." He hissed when Sam smeared some of the cold cream over one of the cuts. The sting came a few seconds later and Dean ground his teeth to keep from cursing. "None of them are serious," he assured the little girl. "But Sammy here, he's just making sure they stay clean and don't get infected."

 

Sam hummed and moved on to another cut.

 

Trying to distract himself a little from what Sammy was doing Dean reached over to Sage. "Com'er and let me get those buckles done up for you," Dean said. Moving meant it would take Sam longer to finish up with the cuts, but adjusting the buckles and straps on Sage's overalls gave Dean something to do other than swear at his brother.

 

It only took a minute to get the buckles done up properly on the overalls and Dean was once more gritting his teeth as Sam dabbed at the cuts on his chest and sides. "You should have let me take a look at these earlier," Sam muttered.

 

"They aren't that bad, Sammy," Dean hissed.

 

Sam snorted and reached for the roll of gauze and bandages. "They aren't serious now, but what if one of them had gotten infected because you were too busy being a stubborn ass?"

 

Dean just rolled his eyes and let his brother work. There wasn't any point in arguing with him about something like this. It wouldn't matter what Dean said, Sam would find some way to make Dean feel like an ass.

 

"Did you bring back any food?" Dean asked.

 

"There's a dinner a couple blocks away," Sam answered. "Didn't see the point in bringing food back when we're leaving in the morning anyway."

 

Dean frowned at his brother. Because, sure, when it was just him and Sam they'd skip meals when they were on the road or money was tight while they waited for a new card to come in. It was different with a kid in tow, though. There used to be food in the car all the time when they were younger and they were going to be on the road for a while. Sure it might only have been slightly stale bread and peanut butter they had to eat with their fingers, but it was food.

 

Sam pulling at the waist of his jeans to peak under the material drew Dean back to himself. "How far down do those cuts go, Dean?"

 

Dean pulled away from his brother, standing up and reaching for his shirt. "Far enough," he responded tightly, jerking his t-shirt over his head. When he looked back to his brother's concerned face Dean sagged a little on the inside. "You can check them later, Sammy, promise. But first, I'm starved."

 

There was no way Dean was going to strip down with Sage awake and in the same room as them. Dean watched as Sam's gaze flicked towards Sage and then back to him before understanding seemed to dawn on his brother's expression and he let the matter drop for the moment.

 

Turning back to the kid, Dean hoisted her up onto his hip and wandered over to where they'd left the clothes Sam had bought her. "Alright, now. Let's see if Sam's a good judge of shoe size."

 

 

~*~*~

 

They didn't have to wait long before a waitress came around to take their orders when they got to the dinner. Dean wasn't sure he'd ever seen a woman respond to him like that before either. All sweet smiles and soft looks. He wasn't entire sure he was comfortable with the difference either. _Flirty he could handle, but having some woman look at him like she were putting him in some kind of domestic fantasy was just damn creepy._

 

Flipping the plastic menus around until he found the kid sized meals Dean did the best he could at ignoring the attention they were getting.

 

Looking over the food lists, he frowned at the choices, just realizing he knew nothing about the kid sitting next to him. Tucked between Dean's side and the window, Sage was building a house out of the sugar packets.

 

It wasn't like it was difficult to order for a kid. Chicken fingers or a burger with fires would probably do the trick. Except Dean had no idea if the girl had allergies. Frowning at the menu for another moment, Dean completely missed whatever it was the waitress had asked when she came back with their drinks.

 

"We need a few more minutes before we order," Sam was saying.

 

Dean glanced up then and tossed a grin to their waitress before going back to the menu.

 

Laying the menu down on the table Dean turned to the kid sitting next to him. "So what kind of food do you want?" he asked.

 

Sage abandoned her sugar packet house and pulled herself up to stand on the bench and look at the menu. She was frowning down at the thing hard enough that Dean realized that she probably couldn't read it.

 

Leaning over with her he started going through the options with her. "Okay," he said, settling in as though for a serious debate. "So we got chicken with french fries, burgers with fries, hot dogs with french fries, mac and cheese, and pizza." He pointed out each item on the menu as he read it to her. "Any of that sound good to you?"

 

Dean watched her consider the menu for another second before she jabbed a finger at her choice. "Chicken fingers and fries it is then," Dean said with a grin.

 

When he looked over to Sam, Dean was taken aback by the thoughtful look on his brother's face. It was an expression Dean was more used to seeing while Sam was figuring out what piece of the puzzle they were missing during a hunt. He'd never actually had it directed at him before. "What?" he asked, a little more defensively than he had intended.

 

Sam didn't get a chance to answer right away since their waitress decided to come back and check on them. They put in their orders and waited for her to leave.

 

Soon as she was gone, Sam didn't waste another second to answer Dean's question. "Does she speak at all?"

 

Dean tossed his brother a glare before answering. "Yes, Sam, she speaks."

 

Sage threw a sugar packet at Sam. It didn't do more than bounce off Sam's arm but the point had been made and it made Dean laugh. "She's got a point, Sammy."

 

"And what point would that be, Dean?" Sam asked, scowling slightly as he tossed the sugar packet back onto the table.

 

Dean smirked at his brother then. "It's kinda rude to talk about someone when they're sitting right there."

 

Sam flushed at being called on his behaviour and Dean suppressed the laughter that wanted to break free. Because it used to be Sammy point out to him and John that they were talking about him as though he weren't even in the room. Sage just went back to playing with the sugar packet now that the food choices had been made.

 

"Which way do you want to head out tomorrow?" Sam asked, switching the topic of conversation.

 

Dean shrugged a little. "Find any hunts?"

 

Sam frowned at him before answering. "Couple states over," he said with some hesitation. "Either a haunting or a cursed object."

 

"Then we'll head out that way," Dean answered. Leaning over to the unoccupied table a few feet away he picked up the little tray with the sugar packets and passed them over to Sage. "I don't really want to be sitting to still right now. A little more distance'll be nice."

 

"Dean," Sam started and then stopped. "Dean, if whatever took you is still back there, we should go back and kill it."

 

"No," Dean stated flatly.

 

"Make sure of the kill," Sam quoted with a fairly good imitation of John's voice. "Dean, you know as well as I do that you don't just leave the creature wounded because it'll probably come back ten times as pissed."

 

"It wasn't a monster, Sam," Dean told him in a hushed voice. "It was just a sadistic son of a bitch. And we aren't talkin' about this here with present company."

 

They were saved from further conversation when their waitress arrived with the food. Dean got distracted helping Sage set up her plate, getting ketchup and vinegar on her fries and a little puddle of mustard for her chicken. And then he just dug right into his own food, not giving Sam a chance to pick their conversation back up.

 

The three of them ate in silence after that. Even after they got deserts all around. Dean wasn't used to not talking to Sam through meals. They were usually discussing what ever hunt they were on, or one they were planning to take.

 

It didn't help that he still felt unnerved by what had happened back at that house with Clayton Reynolds. Keeping secrets from Sam wasn't something he'd ever actually done before. Not intentionally anyway. Forgetting to tell his brother about something was one thing, but just not saying anything? It felt too much like lying to the one person in the world he could actually tell the entire truth to.

 

The slight tugging on his sleeve brought Dean back to himself and where he was. Dean shivered a little when the material got pulled away from his skin, leaving a little pocket of cool air behind. Even his shower hadn't helped him produce any body heat. He'd felt cold ever since Sam had finished wrapping his chest.

 

Sage tugged on his sleeve again to get his attention. "What is it, sweetheart?" he asked, leaning towards her.

 

Stretching up she whispered to him, "Bathroom." Or at least, Dean's brain translated _bat-hoom_ to mean bathroom.

 

He still hesitated a second before sliding out of the booth and holding his own out to the kid. "We'll be back in a few, Sammy," Dean said before leading the way to the back of the dinner where the bathrooms were.

 

And that was when Dean realized just how screwed he was. Because he hadn't had to do this kind of thing since Sam had grown up. And it had been so much easier then. Dean stood hesitating just outside of the bathrooms trying to figure out which one he was supposed to be using.

 

He'd probably get the cops called on him if he brought Sage into the women's bathroom, but he didn't really want to bring her into the men's room either. Sage danced a little while Dean stood around trying to make up his mind.

 

Squaring his shoulders, Dean stepped forward and pushed open the men's room door. Going in first, he made sure there wasn't anyone standing at one of the urinals before opening the door wider for Sage to follow him in. The bathroom was blessedly empty.

 

Dean checked the one stall to make sure it was clean before crouching down to undo the buckles on the overalls. "Okay, the toilet's clean and the seats down. I'm going to be standing right outside the stall holding the door closed for you, okay?"

 

Sage nodded and then dashed to the toilet as soon as the buckles were free on her overalls. Dean closed the bathroom stall and held it shut from the top. He felt sort of like a pervert for bringing a little girl into the men's bathroom, just standing there. But it wasn't like he could have just handed her off to their waitress.

 

He just hoped to god she didn't fall into the toilet while she was in there. Because, yeah, that wasn't something Dean wanted to deal with, but it was probably something he should have thought of before letting her in there on her own.

 

"Everything alright in there?" Dean asked, not really sure if he should expect an answer or not. They were alone, so she might talk, but then Dean had promised her that she didn't have to talk if she really didn't want to.

 

He got a little hum in response to his question. And everything sounded like it was okay since he could hear her pulling the toilet paper and then clothing getting pulled back into place. She was tugging on the bottom of the door to be let out a minute later.

 

Dean opened the door and crouched back down to redo her overalls before getting up and flushing the toilet. "Let's get those hands washed," Dean said leading the way to the sinks.

 

By the time they got back from the bathroom, Sam had already settled their bill and gotten a couple of coffees to go with a juice box.

 

~*~*~

 

It didn't really take that much to get Sage settled in for the night. She was sitting next to Dean on one of the beds watching a movie about some rat that could cook and was helping some poor kid keep his job. Dean wasn't really sure; he hadn't been paying that much attention to the movie since they ordered it.

 

He was just relaxing, sort of drifting between wakefulness and half asleep, with the warm weight of little girl tucked against his side. He'd never known that a kid's physical presence could be so calming and soothing. It seemed sort of contradictory really, since kids were a lot of work and a shit load of worry.

 

Sam was sitting at the table, laptop open, papers and news articles scattered around him. He was researching their next hunt, trying to collect as much information as he possibly could before they left in the morning. Dean was pretty sure Sam didn't actually need to be doing that much work before they got to wherever it was they were going - not that Dean had actually asked where they were headed except for away. Dean had a feeling that Sam was just bidding his time until they could talk.

 

Talk about what had happened after Dean had left the motel room. Where he'd been taken, by whom, what had happened there. Sam would want all the details. And Dean wasn't sure he could give them all away. He wasn't even sure he knew what the fuck was going on. Because how was he supposed to tell Sammy that there was a chance that he had some freaky powers of his own now? At least, not without sounding hypocritical and calling himself a freak. Because if he actually did have those powers? What else could he be?

 

The credits were rolling on the screen sooner than Dean would have liked, and Sage was down for the count when Sam called over to him.

 

Shifting carefully out of the bed, Dean tucked the blankets back around Sage before he grabbed a seat at the table with Sam. Dean had no idea how to start this conversation. Fuck, he didn't even want to be having it in the first place. He just wanted to forget anything had ever happened, that there hadn't been a reason for him to be out and about that night instead of tucked away in the motel room with Sam.

 

"So," Sam started and Dean glanced up at his brother, waiting. "How far down do the cuts go?"

 

Dean blinked slowly, trying not to let his eyes fall shut in relief. Because his injuries were something like a safe topic of discussion. In a kind of twisted way where Dean wasn't actually talking about what had happened to him.

 

"Over my hips and a couple on my upper thighs," Dean answered and watched as Sam got up and went for the first aid kit again.

 

Dean stood up to follow Sam into the bathroom. The kid might be asleep, but Dean wasn't dropping his pants while in the same room as her. That was just all levels of wrong.

 

With the door shut behind them, Dean undid the button fly of his jeans and wiggled the thick material down so Sam could get at the cuts that had been hidden from him before. He leaned back against the counter while Sam sat on the edge of the tub to get a better look.

 

Sam reached out and traced a finger over one of the longer cuts running parallel to his right him. "These are going to suck when they start to heal," he said softly.

 

Dean didn't bother to try and hide the shiver Sam's touch evoked. Sam's touch had been warm where everything else had been cold. Dean still felt like he'd been left out in the cold too long, like he'd never feel warm again. Sam felt warm, hot even, and Dean just wanted to wrap himself up in that heat.

 

Sam withdrew his touch and reached for the first aid kit he'd brought in with them. In the closed off space of the bathroom the cream Sam smeared over the cuts didn't just sting, but actually had a pretty sharp smell as well. Dean hissed his discomfort when Sam smeared the stuff over his skin, fingers gentle.

 

"You going to tell me what happened to you?" Sam asked.

 

He didn't look up at Dean when he spoke, keeping his gaze fixed on his work. Dean stared down at the top of his brother's head when he answered. "I don't really know," he said honestly.

 

Sam did look up at that, lifting his eyebrows in question before turning back to put cream on another cut.

 

"I got in the car," he continued through gritted teeth. "And drove out to that shit little bar we hit up our first day in town. Son of a bitch got me just as I was getting out of the car. I don't know what happened, but he must of knocked me over the head," he said, fingering the small healing gash just running along his hairline.

 

Sam pulled back and motioned for Dean to drop his pants so he could get to the few cuts on his thighs. Dean tugged the waist of his boxers back up and pushed his jeans down far enough so he could just lift the bottom of his boxers up. That got a slightly amused look from Sam.

 

Dean felt himself flush a little when Sam smirked up at him, but was thankful he didn't question it. Because it had been a long time since Dean had felt uncomfortable being naked around his brother. It might have taken them a while to admit that they wanted each other, and even longer before they were even remotely okay with doing something about it, but ever since then, Dean had tossed what little modesty he had out the window.

 

_And here he was trying to keep everything covered up like some Victorian virgin_. But if Sam was willing to ignore the odd behaviour, Dean wasn't going to change it. If he'd stripped down he'd have had to put his ass against the cold counter, and he was having enough trouble staying warm as it was.

 

"What happened after that?" Sam pushed softly.

 

Dean swallowed as Sam checked the few cuts on his thighs before answering. "Think he must have drugged me. Woke up the first time and all I remember is hearing some woman screaming in the background. Then... When the drugs wore off, woke up and I saw the kid sleeping in a cage next to mine. Lying in a puddle of blood against her mother's dead body."

 

Sam's head snapped up, his hands curling around Dean's thighs. "Fuck, Dean," he hissed up to his brother. Disgust and horror warring for dominance in his expression.

 

Dean shuddered when Sam's warm hands pressed into his skin. All he could think about was sinking into that heat, pulling it around himself like a security blanket. He was thankful that the horror of what he'd described to Sam kept him from picking up on the skip in Dean's words. Because he didn't know how to tell Sam about that dream that wasn't a dream, but still could have been a drug induced hallucination, but probably wasn't. It was confusing enough wrapping his mind around what had actually happened without having to put it into words.

 

"Is that..." Sam hesitated a second before going on. "Is that way she's not talking?"

 

And Dean knew that there was more to Sam's question than what he'd said. A deeper meaning behind the words that he just couldn't voice. Dean wanted to say _isn't that enough of a reason, Sammy?_ Only he didn't because he'd wondered the same thing. "I think so," he said instead. "I don't really know. He took her away once that I know of, and then there were the times when I was out cold that I can't really account for, you know."

 

Sam looked at the closed bathroom door and then back to Dean. Dean could practically see the wheels working in Sam's brain in that one moment. The way he was rearranging the information he knew to fit into a new pattern, coming to a new conclusion. Whatever that conclusion was tipped the scales on which emotion won the battle because horror reflected clearly in Sam's eyes.

 

"Jesus Christ," Sam spat, tipping his head forward to rest on Dean's hip. "God, I don't even want to think about what might have happened to her." The words were spoken into Dean's skin, warm breath raising goose bumps.

 

Dean ran the fingers of one hand through Sam's hair, keeping his close without changing the touch into more than it was. An exchange of contact and comfort. They stayed like that for a few minutes, Dean just absorbing the warmth of Sam's touch.

 

When Sam finally pulled away and started to put the stuff back into the first aid kit, Dean resettled his clothes and pulled his jeans back up. "What about those?" he asked, gesturing vaguely towards the cuts decorating Dean's body.

 

Dean didn't even bother glancing at them. He just had to move to feel them; pulling at his skin every time he breathed or shifted. "He was a sick son of a bitch," Dean answered. "Took me into another room to cut on me some."

 

"Why didn't you just over power him and get the hell out?"

 

Dean ran his hands through his hair and stepped to the side so Sam could wash his hands. "I'm pretty sure he was some kind of psychic," Dean finally answered. "Used some kind of mojo to move me around when he got me out of that fucking cage."

 

Dean could feel Sam watching him in the mirror but didn't look up to meet his brother's eyes. This was difficult enough without having to look Sam in the eye and lie to him. There wasn't enough room to be having this conversation in the bathroom. Except he wasn't going to go out into the other room and have it with Sage sleeping in one of the beds. And Dean wasn't going to just leave the room to settle this with Sam over a couple of beers in a bar.

 

"If he was psychic..." Sam began, turning around to watch Dean try to pace in the tiny space.

 

"He was weak," Dean told him. "He didn't really have much control. The harder I struggled the more effort the bastard had to put into holding me." Dean shook his head and glanced over at Sam. "The last day, he was saying something about having some long term plans for Sage. Keeping her around and shit once he'd killed me. I just... I don't know," Dean said with a shrug. "I just sort of threw everything I had into fighting that invisible hold of his and I got free.

 

"And fuck, he was pissed. Didn't even really seem phased by it," Dean continued, his words getting tight and clipped. "And then, fuck, I don't really know what happened. But these ghosts or shades or something, they just started melting out of the walls or something and went after him. He was screaming when I grabbed the kid and just ran for it."

 

Sam reached out for him then. Long arms wrapping around Dean's shoulders, pulling him in to all that body heat. Dean didn't resist, just put his own arms around his brother and tucked his head against Sam's shoulder. Some little part of his brain was telling him draw back, because Sam thought Dean needed to be comforted and he didn't. Didn't need to be reassured that he was okay, that everything was going to be all right. Except that would mean giving up finally feeling some kind of warmth since yesterday. And Dean didn't really want to give that up just yet.

 

They stood like that for what felt like forever, but was probably just seconds, before Sam asked another question. "What are we going to do with her now?"

 

"What do you mean?" Dean asked, pulling away.

 

Sam blinked at him, confused for a second. "We can't keep a kid, Dean," Sam told him, obviously trying for reasonable when he held his hands out before him.

 

Dean took a half step back, crossing his arms over his chest. "What do you want me to do with her?" Dean demanded, keeping his voice low. "Drop her off at a pawn shop and trade her in?"

 

"Dude, orphanages," Sam tried.

 

"Yes," Dean scoffed. "Because the foster care system is really going to know what to do with her."

 

Sam frowned at him, leaning forward into Dean's space. "Well, she'll be better off with a foster family than with us."

 

Dean could see Sam was getting pissed that logic - _or Sam logic anyway_ \- wasn't working with Dean. But Dean wasn't going to back down on this. "I didn't do such a bad job with you," he pointed out, watched his brother flinch. "You turned out pretty good, Sammy. Went off to Stanford even."

 

"Seriously, Dean," Sam pressed, muscles coiled tight where he leaned back against the counter. "We're having an incestuous relationship, travelling all over the country killing things that shouldn't exist outside of fairy tales and bad horror movies. She's going to have to go to school eventually. Are you going to move her from one school to another like Dad did with us?"

 

And fuck Sam for having a point there. Because Dean had hated bouncing from one school to another just as much as Sam had. He'd just been better at hiding it than Sammy had been. "Her life is already fucked up to begin with, Sam. Living with two brothers who happen to be fucking isn't going to traumatize her any more than she already is."

 

After learning why Sage didn't speak, and think about the other reasons she might never want to, Dean watched Sam forced to give up some ground. Because, honestly, dealing with incest would be a vast improvement over what would have happened to her if Dean had left her with Clayton.

 

"Besides," Dean continued, not giving Sam a chance to make another argument. "There's such thing as home schooling. We can use Bobby's address and enrol her in classes like that. Most of the work would get sent through the net anyway."

 

Surprise flickered over Sam's face at that. It made Dean relax a little. "You've actually thought about this, haven't you?" he asked, voice soft and hesitant.

 

Dean looked down and then back up before answering. "Yeah, I've thought about it." He shrugged then and stepped away from Sam, reaching for the door. "Look, I promised her that she wouldn't have to leave. That she could stay here with me. Don't make me break my promise, Sam."

 

~*~*~

 

Sam wasn't sure what it was that woke him up. But Dean was missing from the bed and glancing at the cheep clock radio on the night stand told him it was to god damn early to be awake.

 

Rolling over, Sam didn’t have to search very hard before he found his brother.

 

He was sleeping in the other bed with Sage, tucked up against his chest, an arm wrapped protectively around her. That sight made something tighten in Sam's chest.

 

He'd always known Dean was good with kids. Seeing his brother with that little girl just drove the point home. Because he might have been the one to leave and make a try for normal - a real job, a real home, maybe a wife - but Dean was the one who'd held tight to the idea of family.

 

And fast their little adventure in dream walking, Sam knew that somewhere deep down his brother wanted a family of his own. Wanted some place that was safe, someone who wasn't tainted and touched by all the things they'd seen and done. He wanted kids and everything that came with it.

 

Sam couldn't give him that.

 

And now there was the little girl. Dean had taken her, wanted to keep her. And it terrified Sam that Dean might actually make good on his words that he wasn't going to hunt forever.

 

+++++

 


	3. Chapter 3

**Part Three**

  
****

They had spent the last three days on the road, heading towards the hunt that Sam had found. Three days of tense silence that Dean didn't know how to break, of stilted conversations where his words seemed to have some kind of double meaning. Dean was getting sick of it.

He was ready to just check and see if there was another hunter in the area who could go in and deal with whatever the fuck was going on. They were pretty sure it was a cursed object, something that kept getting passed around, because there was nothing that tied any of the previous victims together.

Staring down at the handful of print offs Sam had given him; Dean wasn't even sure what the hell he was reading anymore. He was pretty sure he was reading about how the first victim fell on their ass twice before they managed to wobble out their first steps, while comparing the number of steps taken to the number of letters in the first word of the second victim. _Sam was good and digging into other peoples pasts... thank fuck he'd never gotten a real chance to get to know any of the computer nerds in high school or he'd probably have become some kind of hacker._

Shoving the papers away, Dean turned to see where Sam had gotten off to, and if their food was on the way.

Rubbing at his eyes, Dean caught sight of Sam in line with a stack of local papers in his hands at the cash register. Their waitress was sweet talking a couple of truckers at the other end of the diner, and Dean could see their food getting cold on the counter lining the open window to the kitchen.

His stomach rolled at the smell of food. He'd been feeling like shit almost since they'd hit the road three days ago. And whatever it was he'd picked up wasn't one of those twenty-four hour things either. Dean was bundled up in his favourite long sleeved grey shirt with one of Sam's massive goodies to stay warm and just the thought of food turned his stomach in so many unpleasant ways.

Dean turned his attention to the little girl sitting next to him on his side of the booth. Sage was drawing in one of the colouring books he'd picked up for her the other day. She'd looked bored in the back seat of the Impala, staring out one of the windows, watching the world pass her by. Dean had picked up the box of crayons and the colouring books to keep her occupied.

Picking up the green crayon Dean reached over and started filling in the leaves of the cartoon tree on the opposite page that Sage was working on. She glanced up at him when Dean started to colour with her and smiled a little at him, wiggling closer to him on the bench. Dean draped his arm over her shoulders when she slid the book to sit between them.

It was quiet work and they were left to it.

Dean was debating which shade of blue to fill the frog in with when Sam dropped into his seat across the table from them. "Dude, are you colouring?" Sam was asking before his ass had even made contact with the bench.

"Yes," Dean answered, giving up on the blues and picking up a red instead. "So anything interesting in the local papers?"

Sam stared at them for a moment before answering, as though having trouble connecting the sight of Dean with a crayon and the mental image he carried of his brother. Dean didn't stop colouring. "Not really, but I haven't actually gotten a chance to read them yet. And seriously man, why are you colouring that frog red?"

"Because I couldn't decided which shade of blue to use." Dean tossed aside the crayon and brought his attention up to Sam just as their waitress finally brought over their food.

Dean swallowed thickly as he stared down at his cheese steak sandwich. Just the sight of melted cheese dripping over slices of stake and mushrooms made Dean's stomach twist. The thought of actually eating the food was worse.

Picking up his fork, Dean shoved some of the food around on his plate. He wasn't interested in eating anything. But looking as though he were was important. Sam would get that scrunched up expression if Dean let on he was feeling sick. He'd want him to go see a doctor or to take a break. And really, Dean didn't want to be taking a break. It was bad enough he was feeling like shit, but he still had that little voice whispering frantically in the back of his mind to _run, run, run_. They weren't far enough away yet.

"There's a motel a few minutes down the road," Dean said. "We'll get a room there for the night and get into White Fall early in the day tomorrow."

Sam looked up from his chicken salad thing, licking extra dressing from his lips. "Why?" Sam asked. "If we push on we can get into White Fall by tonight and already be there tomorrow morning."

"Because we've been on the road for three days, Sammy," Dean told him, trying to keep the slight whine from his voice. "I'm beat. And when we're done eating I don't want to see ash fault for another eight hours, at least."

That must have been the wrong thing to say because Sam got that scrunched up look and actually set aside his fork. But whatever it was Sam was going to say or ask was cut off, when a chair got shoved in next to their table and Castiel sat down.

Dean just stared at the angel for a moment. Sam did his own staring from the other side of the table. And the silence stretched a little uncomfortably between them all.

It was Sage that broke the awkward stillness that had settled around the table. She leaned around Dean's arm to see what was going on, and said, "Shiny." Just before she tucked her face into Dean's side.

It was the first word she'd spoken since asking Dean to take her to the bathroom in the diner two states back in Munster. It was the first thing Sam had ever heard her say.

The surprise on Castiel's face was actually kind of shocking to see. Dean hadn't been sure that the angel was even capable of feeling emotions, or at least expressing them in any kind of meaningful way. Besides, he'd always seemed to know more about Dean than Dean knew about himself.

"What are you going here, Cas?" Dean asked finally. He pushed away his plate and wrapped an arm over Sage's shoulders, holding her closer to the shelter of his body.

Castiel looked back to Dean then, the surprise still colouring his features. "Another Seal is about to be broken," he announced. "Who is the child?"

Sam snorted and reached for his glass of iced tea without making a comment. Castiel and Dean both ignored him.

"Sage Morgan," Dean answered. "And where exactly is this new Seal going to be broken, and when?"

"In Blackburn, five days from now," the angel replied. "Where did you find this child?"

"From the same place he got taken to when he went missing," Sam snapped. "You remember, right about the same time you stopped by and asked me to deal with another Seal for you?"

Dean watched with interest as the angel's head tilted off to one side. "Yes, but why is the child still with you?"

"God, what did you people expect me to do with her?" Dean demanded. "Just leave her on the side of the road with a sign that said '_free to good home_'?"

"Children are still sold?" Castiel asked.

"You know what?" Dean said, sliding from the booth. "This conversation is finished. We've got a hunt already, why don't you find someone else to take care of that Seal for you?"

Sam got the picture and grabbed his coat and slid out of the booth as well. Dean reached down and picked Sage up, settling the little girl on his hip and heading towards the door and out to the car. Sam dealt with the bill and Dean just tried to ignore the angel that was following him out of the truck stop.

"A Rawhead and Bloody Bones will be summoned, Dean," Castiel called out, making Dean stop in his tracks and turn to face the angel. "You've hunted one before; you know what it is they do."

"We aren't the only one's who've hunted Rawheads before," Dean pointed out. "They might be rare fuckers, but still common enough."

"There is a detention center for troubled youth in Blackburn," Castiel informed him. The angel might have been talking to Dean, but his eyes were all for the little girl in Dean's arms. "That is where the Seal will be broken and the Rawhead and Bloody Bones will be summoned."

Dean felt his hold on the kid in his arms tighten a little at the same time as he felt all the blood drain from his face. _If the Rawhead was summoned in a detention center for kids, there would be an endless feast waiting for it... no one was really going to miss a handful of troublesome and probably violent kids... and by the time someone finally noticed something was wrong, that too many kids had gone missing or died, it would be too late, the Rawhead would be too strong to kill._

Taking a step back, Dean leaned against the hood of his car. "_Jesus Christ_," Dean breathed.

Looking around, he caught sight of Sam a few feet behind Castiel. Dean just stared at his brother. He could feel how wide his eyes were, knew just how clearly the horror must be reflecting on his face to make Sam's stride actually lengthen. When Sam was at his side, hand reaching out to grab Dean's arm, Dean let himself lean a little into Sam's touch. Just absorbing the warmth while he tried to wrap his mind around just how truly fucked they were.

"Dean?" Sam called, frowning at his brother.

Dean looked back to where Castiel was standing and found the parking lot empty. _Cocky shit_, Dean thought. "Who do we know in the area that can take this hunt for us?" Dean asked his voice rough.

Sam pulled back from Dean still frowning. "I don't know. I could give Chris a call," Sam said with a slight shudder. "She's pretty good at handling cursed objects."

Dean nodded, suppressing his own shudder. Most hunters specialized in something. They could all handle the basic salt and burns because ghosts were the bread and butter for every hunter. But they all eventually gravitated to one critter or another eventually. Christina Sheridan had lost her twin sister to a cursed object years ago, no one was really all that sure. The only thing Dean knew for certain was that Chris made his dick shrivel and his balls try to crawl up inside his body without even being in the same room.

"Give her a call," Dean said, pushing away from the car. "Send her everything we've got so far. Let's just hope she doesn't decide to burn the town down."

~*~*~

The motel down the road was actually fairly decent and little above their usual price range, too. Dean was pretty sure that at a place like this, people would notice if they used markers on the walls and left salt lines on the floor.

Not that it really mattered since they were only staying the one night this time anyway.

Sam had called Chris while they drove out to the motel. He gave her the basics over the phone, promised to e-mail her everything they had so far. Which wasn't a whole hell of a lot, but it was better than just sending her a rumour of a cursed object and the name of a town.

They'd hardly even set foot in their room when there was a knock on the door.

Sam looked through the peep hole and looked over his should to Dean. "It's Ruby."

Dean sighed and lowered Sage to the floor. "Let her in," Dean said. "She'll just stand out there knocking on the door all night otherwise."

Sam rolled his eyes but opened the door for the demon. "We just got here," Sam told her.

"I know," Ruby answered, walking into the room. "A little classier than your usual, isn't it?" She didn't even wait for a response before continuing. "I heard a rumour that someone is planning to raise a Rawhead in Blackburn later this week."

"We know," Dean answered tiredly.

"We do?" Sam asked. Ruby turned and finally looked at Dean properly.

"Yeah," Dean answered. "S'what Cas has us going after."

Ruby wasn't even paying attention to them anymore. "Who's that?" she asked.

Dean glanced down at Sage, who was standing next to him, thumb in her mouth again. She wasn't trying to hide behind Dean this time, like she usually did when a stranger got too close. She was staring up at Ruby with wide, curious eyes.

"Sage," Dean told her. He hadn't actually meant to tell her the girl's name. But Sage's lack of fear or weariness made him answer instead of telling Ruby to fuck off.

"Hey, Sage," Ruby greeted with a smile. "I'm Ruby."

Sage waved at Ruby with the same hand she was sucking her thumb from. She didn't step away from Dean, still held on to the leg of his jeans, but she was responding. That was better than could be said for the way she acted around Sammy.

Dean didn't have the energy to spare trying to figure out why that was. It was probably because Ruby was a woman, but Dean didn't think so. There had been more than a few waitresses who'd tried to draw the little girl out of her shell and they hadn't succeeded nearly so well.

Sam was standing awkwardly back from the interactions taking place, his arms crossed over his chest. "How'd you end up with Dean and Sam, sweetie?"

Sage looked up at Dean to answer for her.

"I found her," Dean said simply. He was pretty sure Sam would fill Ruby in on the details if he hadn't already.

Sighing, Dean rubbed his hand over his face and through his hair. "Look, we already know that a Rawhead is going to get summoned in Blackburn and right now I just want to get some sleep," Dean said.

Ruby looked up at him, frowning slightly. Dean didn't even bother trying to figure out what expression was on her face. He had enough to deal with trying to read Sam at the best of times, and now learning Sage's expressions on top of that. He didn't need to go trying to figure out the demon woman as well.

"I'll get out of your hair then," Ruby said, straightening up and looking between Sam and Dean. "I only stuck around long enough to tell you guys about the rumours I heard anyway. I'm getting out of town tonight."

Sam pushed himself forward, curiosity and concern in his voice when he asked, "Why?"

"You can't feel it?" she asked. "There is this sucking void in town. I've been feeling it all day, like something's calling for me." Shaking her head, Ruby tossed her hair back over her shoulders and backed towards the door. "I'm not sticking around for whatever it is to find me."

"What is it?" Sam asked. And Dean could curse Sam for his curiosity and his need to know things. Because Dean just wanted to sleep. He wanted the room secured and Ruby gone and to crawl under the sheets to wrap himself up in his brother's warmth.

"I don't know." And there was something like real fear in her voice. Not the same kind of restrained terror that came out when she spoke about Lilith, but something a little more animalistic. "But whatever it is, Sam, I don't want to be around to find out."

With that she pulled the door open and slammed it shut behind her.

Sam turned back to Dean when the door closed. Question clear in his brother's eyes. "Just add it to the e-mail you're going to send Chris," Dean told him. "We aren't sticking around to find out what it is either."

"Whatever it is, Dean, has Ruby running scared," Sam pointed out. But he went for his laptop bag anyway. Dean figured he'd won the argument at least. "Chris is better suited to cursed objects and ghost hunting that she is at dealing with actual supernatural creatures."

Dean just shrugged at that. "Chris is a big girl," he said, heading to their bags. "She can take care of herself. And if she doesn't think she can, she'll call in someone else to help out."

"Yeah, I know," Sam muttered and set up his laptop.

Silence stretched for a little while then. Sam clicking away at his laptop, writing the e-mail to Chris, while Dean got Sage ready for bed. They were going to have to stop and do laundry at some point, Dean decided. 

Sage was running out of clean clothes, and Dean was running low on stuff that passed the sniff test, Sam couldn't be far behind. Settling in with the kid on one of the beds with the colouring book and crayons, Dean left Sam to his work. Sam had turned on the TV, volume on low, just to fill in the silence while they wound down for the night.

Sometime later, Sam got up, stretching, and headed for the bathroom to change. Sage was already sagging at his side. So Dean just tucked the little girl into the blankets and moved over to the other bed.

When Sam came out of the bathroom, Dean was already under the sheets; pillow rucked up under his head. He got in behind Dean, tossing an arm over him and pulling Dean back against Sam's body. Dean let himself sink into the heat radiating from Sam, feeling his muscles relax for the first time that day.

"'Night, Sammy," Dean murmured into his pillow.

"G'night, Dean."

The TV was still playing on low in the background when Dean drifted off to sleep.

~*~*~

Sam woke up when he felt Dean crawl out of bed in the middle of the night.

He kept his body relaxed as Dean tossed the covers back.

"'nother bad dream?" Dean asked in a sleep rough voice.

Sam didn't need to open his eyes to know that Sage was standing next to their bed. Each night, she'd woken up from a bad dream and gotten Dean awake too. His brother would get out of their bed and move to the other one to fall asleep with the little girl. And each time, Sam pretended to be asleep.

Sam waited until they were both settled and had fallen back asleep before getting up himself. Grabbing his cell phone from the night stand, Sam picked up the card key for their room and went right for the door. He already knew who he was going to call before he'd even finished dialling the number.

One ring and Ruby answered her phone. _"Why aren't you asleep, Sam?"_ she asked.

Sam could hear traffic sounds on the other end of the line and the rumble of the engine of Ruby's car. She was still driving. "I could ask you the same thing," Sam said.

Ruby laughed at that. _"Demon here. I don't really need to sleep anymore."_

When Sam didn't say anything else, Ruby asked, _"Why are you calling me?"_

"I don't know," Sam sighed, pushing his hair out of his face as he paced the hallway. "It's just that... Dean brought that kid back from wherever it was he got taken to."

_"I kind of figured as much,"_ Ruby told him. _"Dean doesn't really seem like the kidnapping type." _

"He's not," Sam defended his brother. "He's always been good with kids. And he'd probably never admit it, but he loves 'em. We got into a fight the night he disappeared," Sam admitted.

_"A fight about what?"_

"Hunting. Well, not hunting actually," Sam said. He dropped his head back and closed his eyes before going on. "Dean said he didn't want to hunt forever. That he wanted to settle down one day."

_"No one wants to hunt forever, Sam,"_ Ruby pointed out. _"This isn't exactly the life you wanted for yourself either." _

"I know," he said softly. "I _know_ that. It's just... between the two of us, I'm the one who wanted _normal_. Dean never really seemed interested in any other kind of life." Leaning against a wall, Sam slid down until he was sitting on the floor. "I told him that. Told him he'd never actually settle down and get the family he wanted."

Ruby was quiet on the other side of the line.

"I think I'm losing him," Sam finally admitted in a soft voice.

_"Sam..." _

"Don't," Sam pleaded. "Don't tell me I'm wrong, Ruby. You saw him tonight."

_"Yeah, Sam. I saw him tonight. He looked dead on his feet," _she admitted.

Sam nodded even though she couldn't see him, kept his eyes squeezed shut. "He's been like that since I picked him up at that gas station," he told her. "And he's just gotten worse. He's not sleeping, not really. He hardly eats." Swallowing, he tried to continue, "He won't... won't... I can't do this without him, Ruby."

_"Yes, you can,"_ Ruby hissed over the line. _"Sam, you were doing it when he was dead! You picked your shit back up and kept going. You might have been a mess, but you crawled out of your damn bottle and got your head out of your ass enough to start to see daylight. If Dean leaves, you already know you can do it. You won't fall apart, Sam. The world isn't going to end."_

"I don't want to do it without him," Sam responded.

Ruby sighed and gentled her tone. _"Dean isn't going to leave you, Sam. He isn't going anywhere without you. He sold his soul to get you back. What makes you think he's just going to walk away from you without a backward glance? You're the world to him, Sam."_

"I can't give him everything he wants," Sam choked. "I can't... Ruby, he wants kids. He wants a family of his own -"

_"You _are_ his family!"_ Ruby snapped. _"You're everything he's got left in the world."_

"Not anymore."

~*~*~

When Sam finally came back to the room in the morning, arms loaded down with food, Dean had already washed and dressed himself and Sage. The little girl's hair was even done up in a braid, the sight of which made Sam stumble over his own feet.

Dean didn't say anything. Sam knew that Dean was the one to have done Sage's hair. There was no one else there. But he also didn't try to defend himself either. Dean had learned the art of braiding hair 'round about the same time he'd figured out how to deal with a colicky baby.

But it was more than that, too. Dean just didn't have the energy to fight with Sam at the moment. He'd had a hard enough time just willing his body out of bed that morning. Taking up a defensive position when Sam hadn't even opened his mouth yet, seemed like a waste of what little will to stay upright Dean had.

"Breakfast on the go," Dean announced. "We're checking out."

Sam hesitated, standing there in front of him. Dean had to wonder what he looked like to make Sam pause like that. He knew there were dark circles trying to make a home under his eyes, knew he looked pale and sort of hollowed out. But there must have been something more, something else, because Sam never hesitated when he thought something was wrong with Dean. But this time he did.

"I ate on the way back," Sam said, hefting the bag in one hand and the coffee tray in the other. "How about I drive and the two of you have breakfast in the car?"

Dean shrugged a little and tossed the keys to Sam, watching his brother fumble for them when they hit his chest. "Sounds good to us."

Getting their stuff out to the car and then getting checked out of the motel took longer than Dean thought it should. A lot of that probably had to do with the fact that he was having trouble focusing on shit around him. He'd nearly walked into some old woman wandering in the hallway in her nightgown and fuzzy slippers - getting a concerned and confused look from Sam when he quickly jerked out of the way.

Having settled Sage in the backseat with her breakfast and colouring books, Dean climbed into the passenger seat and picked at his bagel and coffee. His stomach still felt tight, like it might actively reject food if he ate anything with some kind of substance. The coffee just crunched unpleasantly with every swallow.

They were heading out of town, back the way they had come. It made Dean feel antsy, like heading back was the wrong thing. He knew they weren't heading back, that they were just backtracking a short way and then heading north, but it didn't make a damn bit of difference. His skin still crawled with the knowledge that he was going in the wrong direction to be running, even if his brain understood they hadn't stopped.

Glancing out the window as they passed the truck stop they'd eaten at the day before, Dean felt his entire body stiffen and his face drain of colour when he got a good look at the occupants of the restaurant.

There, sitting by the window, reading a newspaper, was Clayton Reynolds.

 

 


	4. Chapter 4

**Part Four**

 

Dean made it a couple hours down the road before he demanded that Sam pull over.

Stumbling out of the car and few paces away, Dean leaned over the side of the road and threw up. What little food he’d gotten down the day before, and the coffee his stomach had reluctantly accepted ended up in knee high grass. He counted it as something of a victory that he’d made it that long before he just couldn’t take it anymore. Though, it was something of a hollow victory since Dean hated being sick.

He could hear the car doors creaking open behind him while he dry heaved.

Sam would linger next to the car. He wouldn’t come near Dean until he was finished. Sam already knew Dean hated to be touched when he was tossing his cookies. Couldn’t stand to be seen like that, that weak and defenceless. The violent heaving of his stomach pulled that the healing wounds on his abdomen, leaving a lingering ache that was a little sharper than sore muscles.

Sam would stick by the car, Dean was counting on it. He needed those few minutes to pull his shit together. Sage, on the other hand, crept closer to him.

“Sage,” Sam called. “Don’t. Stick close to the car.”

Dean didn’t even turn around when he heard little feet crunching over loose gravel just behind him. The little girl ignored Sam’s warning, and crept closer to Dean.

She was level with his knee, little hand grabbing on to his pant leg, when she spoke. “Sick?”

Dean looked down to the little girl, wiping his mouth with the back of his hand before answering. “Yeah, sweetheart, I’m feeling a little sick.” His stomach settled a little, though, when Sage wrapped her arms around his leg to give him a hug.

“Bad man make you sick?” she asked him.

Dean wasn’t sure which surprised him more. That she was talking at all, and in nearly complete sentences, or that she knew what had set him off to begin with. Reaching down, Dean picked the kid up and settled her in his arms so that they were eye level. His breath had to have be terrible, but she didn’t pull away when he asked, “Did you see the bad man, too?”

Sage just nodded in reply.

Sam was shifting his weight near the car, feet scraping on the pavement. He kept his silence, though. Just listened to them talk instead. Dean was pretty sure that listening to their conversation was far more informative than Dean had been for the last handful of days. He couldn’t blame his brother for eavesdropping.

“When did you see him?” Dean asked. He made sure to keep his tone light and curious. He wasn’t even sure what other emotion might leak through if he didn’t keep control of it. But whatever it was wouldn’t have been useful.

“Yesterday,” she told him.

And Dean just blinked, turning them back towards the car. “You saw the bad man yesterday?” he confirmed. When she nodded again, Dean forced his voice to be gentle, not forceful or demanding when he asked, “How come you didn’t tell me?”

This time she ducked her head and tried to hide in his shoulder when she answered. “Scared.”

Dean let her hide. That son of a bitch had done more than enough to her to make her terrified of him. Dean was slightly amazed that she’d just pushed the bastard’s presence out of her mind and gone on with the day instead of freaking out wherever she’d seen him.

Glancing over to where Sam was leaning on the hood of the Impala, Dean took them back to the car. Setting the little girl down on the back seat, Dean hunched down and looked her in the eyes. “You should have told me when you saw him yesterday,” Dean said. His tone was calm and even, a gentle reprimand hidden in the words. “I promised you that I wouldn’t let anything bad happen to you while you stayed with us, right?”

Dean waited for the little girl to nod.

“To be able to do that, though,” he continued. “You have to tell me stuff like that. If the bad man is close to us, I can’t keep you safe if I don’t know. You gotta promise to tell me if you see him again, okay?”

“’kay,” Sage answered in a small voice.

Dean smiled at her, trying to let her know that he wasn’t really upset with her. And it seemed to work because she gave him one of those little smiles of hers in return.

"Okay," Dean repeated, and pushed himself to his feet. "We're going to hit the road again in a minute or so. So if you got any running around you want to do, better get it done now."

Sage followed Dean back to the front of the car and took off a few feet down the side of the road before she stopped and picked up a rock. Dean leaned against the hood of the car next to Sam and pulled out his flask of holy water from his coat pocket. Sam waited for Dean to finish rinsing out his mouth before he spoke.

"Are you going to tell me what actually happened?" Sam asked him.

Dean wasn't surprised by the question, he'd actually been expecting it a lot sooner than now, although he should have known better. Sam had shown considerable restraint when it came to asking him about Hell and what had happened there. What did surprise Dean was the mildly flat curiosity in Sam's tone.

A side glance confirmed that his brother wasn't even looking at him. "He did some kind of black magic ritual on me," Dean informed him. He kept watching Sage. He didn't want to look at Sam when he explained this. Didn't want to be explaining it in the first place. "Blood magic, bone ashes, chanting in a language I couldn't recognize. Didn't get a good look at his alter, though."

Sam was silent next to him. Gone so still that if it weren't for the fact Dean could feel Sam's warmth radiating off him, Dean wouldn't have known he was even there.

"Did he tell you anything about the ritual he was preforming?"

Dean shivered at the dark tone of Sam's voice. Something dangerous slithering under those mild words. "Something to do with stripping the natural barriers between a person's mind and their soul mixed in with a binding ritual to capture a soul," he answered, mouth dry with just the memory of it.

Sam shifted next to him then. Drawing his attention away from the four year old collecting rocks from the side of the road. Dean refused to meet his brother's eyes. He didn't need to see what was there. Didn't need to know what was lurking under Sam's careful mask of humanity, didn't want to know if it were a mask at all. Because he could feel the hairs on the back of his neck standing up, shivers racing up and down his spine.

"Those cuts on your chest," Sam stated and asked.

Dean nodded. "Part of the ritual."

It was another few moments of silence before Sam pushed away from the car. "Come on," he said. "We gotta hit the road."

~*~*~

Sam got pictures of the cuts on Dean's body the first night when they stopped.

He loaded them on to the computer and then sort of forgot that the rest of the world existed.

Dean wasn't really surprised that Sam had flicked that switch in his brain to research mode. He'd expected nothing less from his little brother. What bothered Dean was the single minded devotion he gave to it. Dean hardly even got a grunt out of him when Dean presented him with food in the evenings.

The more Sam dug, the more restless Dean got.

Each time they had a small break, Sam was glued to his laptop, clicking through web pages and whatever notes he'd saved to the hard drive. Sam spent more time talking with Bobby than he did talking with Dean. So when they found a motel to crash in for the night, Dean usually took Sage out to the closest playground and let her run wild.

Not that she actually ran wild. No the kid usually just wandered around, collecting rocks and twigs and various bits of plant life to bring back to the room with them. She avoided other children in favour of searching for the perfect fallen leaf. Dean wasn't sure if he should be worried or not about how she limited the contact she had with other people, filtering the world through him.

It wasn't like he had space to throw stones. He'd filtered the world and everyone in it through Sam for almost two years before he started talking again. Even then it was only because Sammy had started talking, too. He'd continued to keep the world at arms length afterward, focusing everything on his little brother._ And then dad had started hunting, cutting them off from everyone else - making them different - teaching them to trust no one, rely on no one, _need_ no one except for each other._ It had kept them alive, nearly driven Dean insane, and probably had an end result John Winchester had never anticipated when he and Sam had sort of fallen head over hormones into bed together.

Watching Sage on those evenings, Dean worried.

Worried about what exactly he was getting himself into keeping a kid around. Life had been hell for him and Sam, but they'd had each other, Sage was on her own with them. And it wasn't like Dean could just go out and pick up another kid - _Sam would more than likely kill him, and Dean wasn't sure he'd survive it, couldn't explain how his father had survived it_. She was an isolated four year old, with no one to share her life with except them.

This wasn't exactly the kind of life anyone should be raised in. Dean _knew_ that. But he also knew that there wasn't much else he could do for her. Anything else they could do would be abandonment or complete betrayal. Because he was sure if he called up Ellen and explained what had happened to Sage, she could probably convince Chloe, Caleb's widow, to take her in. She'd be around children and in a stable home.

Dean just wasn't sure he was able to actually give her up.

~*~*~

It was sometime in the small hours of the morning when Dean woke up. They were a half day out of Blackburn and had stopped for the night because Sam wanted to finish up some research and Dean couldn't keep his eyes open any more.

Their neighbours for the night were having a seriously pissed off argument. Dean couldn't make out what they were saying, but he was about ready to put his fist through the wall to shut them the hell up. He was tired and he wanted to sleep. He didn't want to be kept up half the night listening to Mr. and Mrs. Smith work out their marital problems at two thirty in the morning!

Dean kept himself in check, just pulled one of his pillows up over his head and tried to block them out. Sage and Sammy were both sleeping through the noise. Dean didn't want to be the one to wake them up if they were sleeping through the racket.

Except now Dean couldn't sleep.

Not even Sage's shallow little breaths and rapid little heart could calm and sooth him like they had the last handful of nights. _And what the hell kind of luck were they having if Dean was constantly being woken up by the people in the room next to them? Everywhere they went, the people in the rooms right next to theirs were always noisy. It was driving him nuts!_

When even the pillow over his head couldn't block out the sounds, Dean rolled over to his side and looked for Sam. His brother was crunched up on his side closest to ~~the~~ Dean's bed, hand slightly outstretched and hanging off the side as though in mid reach. Even with the limited light, Dean could see the frown on Sammy's face. Whatever he'd found or hadn't found was continuing to linger in Sam's big brain.

Dean felt desperate when the people upstairs decided to join the party. He hadn't slept soundly through the night in over a week. And when he did manage to fall sleep and stay that way he woke up just as exhausted as he'd felt when he first dropped off. It was like some never ending cycle, and all he wanted was to get some good shut eye and keep down even half a meal without feeling repulsed by the thought of food.

Rolling out of bed, Dean made a quick stop at his bag and continued over to Sam in the other bed.

Dean gently shook Sam's shoulder, jarring his brother from a sound sleep.

"Dean?" Sam's voice was sleep rough and slightly confused.

He didn't bother speaking, just grabbed Sam's hand and tugged a little to get him out of bed. Sam got the message and got out of bed, letting Dean lead him past the other bed and into the little bathroom.

"Hey, Dean, what's going on?" Sam asked, rubbing tiredly at one eye.

Dean shook his head and closed the bathroom door, locking it. "Can't sleep with the racket the people in the next room are making," he answered, voice sounding loud in the little room.

"What--?"

Dean cut him off by reaching into the pocket of the track pants he'd worn to bed and pushing the small tube of lube and condom packet into his brother's hands. "Distract me a little?" Dean asked, taking the half step forward that brought their bodies flush together. Tilting his head back slightly, Dean brushed a kiss over Sam's mouth.

He felt Sam reach over for the light switch and stopped him before he flooded the little bathroom with harsh light. "Don't. The light's just gonna wake me up more, and all I want to do is sleep," Dean said against Sam's lips. "Just..."

"Okay,"Sam breathed. He brought his hands back down to Dean's hips, leaving the lube and condom on the counter, fingers kneading lightly into muscle. "Okay," he said again, pressing a warm kiss to the corner of Dean's mouth.

It was slow and lazy, slightly unfocused since Sam was still half asleep. But Dean practically melted into the warmth of Sam's body pressed against and around his. His brother's large, callused hands running up his sides and over his back, rubbing that heat into muscles long gone stiff from cold.

Dean sighed into the crook of Sam's throat when their clothing got removed and they were standing naked flesh to naked flesh from knee to chin. Sam's lube slicked fingers stretching him open with slow scissoring motions. It had been a while since they'd done this, even longer since it had been this unrushed and easy. But Dean was tired enough, and now relaxed enough with Sam wrapped around him, that it didn't take long before he was stretched out and ready for Sam.

When Sam backed off to reach for the condom, Dean took the moment to turn himself around and face the mirror he couldn't see. Sam gripped one hip and used his other hand to guide the way. It was a slow, steady slide in, Dean's body giving just as Sam thrust forward.

Dean held on tightly to the counter, holding himself in place while holding himself together. Because Sam was buried balls deep in him, heavy body draped over Dean's back, arms wrapped securely around Dean's chest and abdomen. The sex was slow and lazy and everything they never really made time for. Sam's slow and steady thrusts, Dean bracing them against the counter in the dark bathroom.

It didn't take much. Sam's body covering his, slick fist working in counterpoint to Sam's thrusts, calluses catching in all the best ways. Dean could feel his orgasm rushing at him, crashing through his body on a choked breath. Sam kept the same steady, lazy pace and didn't let up, leaving Dean almost quaking through the after shocks until Sam came with a sigh against his shoulder.

Dean kept his eyes closed and locked his elbows in place to keep them from falling face forward onto the cold counter. He could feel the sated feeling working through his body, followed quickly by a wave of exhaustion. He wanted nothing more than to crawl into bed and sleep the sleep of the dead, except that Sam was still half hard in him, still wrapped tightly around him, hinting at morning breath and smelling like sex and home and safety. Dean didn't want to give that up either.

"Okay?" Sam asked, more breathed into the back of Dean's neck.

Dean wasn't sure how to answer him. Didn't even know if his vocal cords were working between the orgasm and the exhaustion. Instead, he reached back and laced his fingers through Sam's hair and brought Sam's face to rest next to his own so Dean could rub his cheek against his brother's.

Sam nodded and they just rested there like that for a moment before Sam pulled back and said, "Okay."

~*~*~

Getting jobs at the Blackburn Correctional Facility was the easy part.

Finding a suitable day care to drop Sage off at was next to impossible. Dean didn't want to leave her alone with a group of kids he didn't know, in an environment he couldn't monitor. Even the reassurances of the Director didn't ease Dean's wariness.

"I assure you, Mr. Tyler," Laurie Dunn, the Director, tried again. "The Courtenay Child Care Center is one of the best in the area. Your daughter will be safe and comfortable there." She smiled up at him through her lashes, and Dean had to remind himself that he was impersonating a single, widower, father who just happened to have been sent over to preform reviews on all the staff. "Besides, it's a close walk if you want to drop over and see her at lunch."

Dean smiled back to the woman. It felt a little weak, even to himself, but he supposed it worked just as well for the back story he'd pulled out of thin air for who he was playing today. "I believe you, Ms. Dunn," Dean assured her. "But it's been just me and Sage since her mother died. I don't really like the idea of leaving her alone in a strange place."

"Understandable," she told him, leading the way down a gray corridor. "Your office is just down here."

She opened a door that looked just like all the rest before and after it. Dean wasn't sure he'd ever be able to find the room again. He hadn't been paying much attention to where they were going in the first place. "It's not much," Laurie said as she stepped into the room. "We spend most of our funding on programs to help the kids here. Doesn't leave much for anything else."

Dean smiled again and took in the little closet space with a desk jammed into it. "I understand," he told her. "I'm not going to be here for very long. These reviews should only take a few days, hopefully. Most of the information I needed was already in the files."

Turning back around, Dean forced a bright smile onto his face. "If you don't mind, Ms. Dunn, my assistant, Sam Hetfield, is running a little late. Could you show him down here when he arrives?"

"Of course," she answered and backed away out the door. "If you need anything, just let me know. I'll be happy to arrange interviews with the staff for you," she offered.

Dean just waves her offer away. "Don't worry about that. I prefer to talk to staff in a less formal setting. Makes them a little less nervous about all this. I'm not here to pass judgment on anyone. It's just a routine check that everything is working the way it should."

~*~*~

"Hey, Bobby," Sam greeted.

He had been standing a half block away from the Correctional Facility when his phone had gone off. He'd been at the library most of the morning, digging through every book he could get his hands on that had anything, even remotely, to do with ritual magic.

"_I hope you realize how many favours I had to call in to get this for you,_" Bobby said, his gruff voice sounding tiny over the phone. "_Those marks that bastard left on Dean were part of a ritual._"

"Which ritual?" Sam asked, staring straight ahead of him.

"_Two of 'em, actually. Some of the darkest stuff I've ever heard tell of being practiced, even by amateurs,_" Bobby told him.

"What were the rituals meant to do, Bobby?" Sam asked, trying to move the conversation along.

Bobby just huffed on the other side of the line. Sam just rolled his eyes. Bobby didn't bother with greetings and small talk when he called, but he didn't like being rushed to the point of his calls either. "_The first one was meant to strip away someone's natural barriers between their mind and the soul,_" Bobby confirmed. "_It's supposed to open a person to a whole shit load of powers. But it's dangerous. Think of the soul like a giant super charged battery stuck into a little shell. You start strippin' away the layers of that shell to get closer to that power..._"

"Fuck," Sam breathed. "You get rid of the shell and you're touching acid."

"_Take away too many layers and that's what happens. Can drive a person crazy, burn 'em up from the inside out with the sudden jolt._" Bobby pushed on from there, not giving Sam a chance to really dwell on the meaning of his words. _Not yet anyway_. "_From what I can tell, doesn't look like that ritual was finished. Some of the marks are missing for the last part of it. But that doesn't meant that enough damage hadn't already got done._"

"What about the second ritual?" Sam asked. "You said there were two of them."

"_Yeah,_" Bobby answered, hesitating. Sam tensed, body coiling tight and at the ready, not that there was anything physical to launch himself at. But that hesitation always spelled bad news, especially when it came from Bobby. "_The second one is the real nasty piece of work,_" Sam heard over the phone.

"_First one was meant to leave Dean's soul like a bare live wire. Second one was supposed to bind his sound to the caster soon as the victim died. And that there is the important part, Sam,_" Bobby stressed. "_Only way that ritual is finished is when the victim dies. The soul gets drawn to the caster and nothing but the caster's death is going to break it._"

"So because Dean didn't die that one doesn't count," he stated. A little sliver of relief working through his system.

"_No,_" Bobby told him. "_No, there's only two parts to that ritual. The casting and then the killing. When Dean dies, if the caster is still alive, then Dean's soul is bound to him._"

Sam sucked in a deep breath and held it for a count of three before letting it out slowly. "Okay," he said. "Okay."

"_Sam?_"

"If the first ritual, the one that's supposed to get rid of the natural barriers between the mind and the soul is only partly completed, what should I be looking for?" Sam asked, ignoring the implied question in Bobby's voice. "Is he just suddenly going to start having visions, or be able to read minds?" _Fuck, don't let him be able to read minds_.

"_Don't know Sam,_" Bobby answered, letting him change the conversation. "_There's no step by step guide to this kind of thing. Everyone's abilities around going to be different, no one's are exactly the same._"

"So it could be anything?"

"_More than likely._"

~*~*~

When Sam finally made it into the Correctional Facility, his mind was miles away from the case they were working. He didn't give a shit about another Seal about to be broken. Even if the apocalypse came out of it, Dean was more important than the world ending. There wouldn't be a reason to save the world if he lost Dean a second time.

Sam was pretty sure he'd only help speed the process along if it came to that.

He was led through the gray halls to the little office space they had been given in a daze. He was pretty sure that the guard who'd been given the task of showing him where to go thought he was touched in the head. Sam didn't care.

He was too busy trying to make the pieces of the puzzle fit together.

Dean's restlessness and sleeplessness, his lack of appetite, the way he'd been acting lately...

If he looked at all that with the idea that Dean had suddenly developed some kind of psychic ability, they made more sense. Because, Sam knew, logically, that Dean loved him. That Dean wasn't going to leave him, not really. He'd had plenty of chances in the past, Sam had given him more than enough reasons too, but Dean had always stuck it out. Always stood by him, even when all he wanted to do was knock Sam around a little at the same time.

He -

They had to talk.

They were _going_ to talk.

Striding down the last hallway he'd been directed to, Sam shoved open the little office door, no clue what he was going to say to his brother to make him see reason. Make him understand that whatever it was Dean could do now they could figure out how to deal with. Just so long as Dean didn't let it kill him.

Sam opened his mouth, not sure what was going to come out. He didn't actually get a chance to find out, however, because Dean spun about to face him and started talking right away.

"Dude, you're way later then you said you'd be," Dean grumped. "I think I've figured out who's going to be doing the summoning of the Rawhead."

Sam snapped his mouth shut and closed the door quickly behind him. They hadn't been in Blackburn more than a day, but if Dean had figured out who they were supposed to go after, then Sam was all for getting out of this place sooner rather then later.

"Who is it?" he asked, stepping forward.

Dean grinned at his brother, pale and proud with dark shadows under his eyes. "Ms. Laurie Dunn, Director."

"Are you sure?" Sam asked. Because it couldn't be that easy, could it? Nothing with the Seal was ever that easy.

"Seriously, Sam," Dean assured him. "It's ten after three. I've already interviewed three of the shrinks working today, two guards, and the events coordinator just sort of stopped by."

"But how--"

"The first shrink that I talked to," and here Dean shuffled around some papers on the desk. "Uh... Mark Johansson ... Anyway, he asked if I'd been sent to investigate some of concerns he'd passed up the line about there being a possible threat to the kids here." Dean shrugged and leaned back against a stack of shelves. "I didn't know what to tell him. He'd just handed me the best possible reason for us being here."

"Since we are investigating a threat to the kids," Sam said, nodding. "What did they say?"

Dean rubbed at his temple, and Sam had to force himself to remain where he was standing. They were in a public place, and even if no one knew they were brothers here, this was neither the time nor the place to try and convince Dean to take a break. They were in the middle of a hunt, Sam had always trusted Dean to call a time out when he needed a break.

"Johansson didn't have anything specific to offer," Dean told him. "He called it a sick feeling in his gut when she was around the kids. The way she treated them like something less than human, and that her ideas of discipline were a little too radical for his comfort even if they still fell within the letter of the law."

Sighing, Dean waved his hands at the mess of papers on the desk. "It's all in there. But the sweet and short version of it all is that Laurie Dunn is a control freak who believes children should be seen and not heard and those who step out of line need to be dealt with."

~*~*~

They interviewed one of the nurses before they left for the day.

The things she'd had to say turned Dean's stomach. A certain level and type of violence was to be expected in a place like Blackburn, she'd told them. Fights and scuffles, the occasional rape, and only once a murder. But there were instances where kids who'd been disruptive coming back from their punishment with broken bones and burns.

When they'd asked why she hadn't said anything, she'd given them a look that could have frozen a lesser man's heart mid-beat and demanded, _Just who the hell would have believed me when the records were changed or went missing?_

They'd swung by Courtenay Child Care Center and picked Sage up from day care before heading back to the motel they were staying at. She was even more reserved and quiet, if that were even possible. It made Dean feel like shit for leaving her there for the day. Made him almost promise to never do it again.

"Please tell me you have some kind of idea on how to deal with a completely human woman about to summon a lesser kind of boogieman?" Dean demanded when they made it back to the motel room. Dean went straight for the bags, pulling out changes of clothes for himself and Sage.

He caught sight of Sam running his hands through his hair in frustration. "I don't even know where to start," he admitted. "It's not like we could just sit her down and have a heart-to-heart or anything. She wouldn't listen, and would probably just summon the damn thing anyway."

Dean nodded, pulling off his tie and undoing the first few buttons of his shirt. "Then we have a problem," Dean said. "Because the only thing I can think of that would actually stop her is to kill her. And I'd really rather not kill a human, no matter how evil she might be."

"Where are you going?" Sam asked suddenly.

Dean looked up from the pile of clothes in front of him. "I'm taking Sage out to a park to play," he finally answered as though it should have been obvious. He'd been doing it for the last handful of days.

"Dean, we're in the middle of a hunt."

Dean just shrugged. "So come with us," he said off handed. "Any park is probably going to be nearly empty this time of day anyway."

"No," Sam answered, taking a small step back. Dean looked up at him, but Sam wasn't looking at him, he was looking at Sage. "I'll go grab us something to eat for when you guys get back," he said, turning his head towards Dean before actually turning his gaze. "I'll see if I can figure out how she's actually planning to summon the damn thing. Maybe if we know that we can find a way to make sure she never does."

Dean just stared at Sam for a moment. He'd always known Sam wasn't comfortable around kids, but refusing to go to a playground where he wouldn't actually have to interact with a bunch of rugrats was new. Dean tried to shove his disappointment to the side and focus on getting Sage and himself ready to go. "Whatever you want, Sammy," he said, not entirely succeeding in keeping that same disappointment from his voice.

Dean gave Sage some clothes and pointed her in the direction of the bathroom. "Go get changed, sweetheart. We'll head out soon as we're both in grubby clothes."

She looked confusedly between Sam and Dean, before frowning up at Dean and going to the bathroom to get changed. He was sort of glad that she still wasn't really talking at the moment. He had a feeling that if she were, she'd be asking why they were fighting, or asking about the boogieman and what it did. Kids latched on to the strangest of things sometimes.

When she'd pushed the bathroom door closed behind her, Dean felt Sam move up behind him. Felt Sam's hands come up and cover his shoulders briefly before Dean stepped away to get changed as well while Sage was in the bathroom. He made quick work stripping out of his slacks and good button up shirt and into a pair of worn jeans and a long sleeved shirt.

Sam moved away and got out his laptop and the papers they'd brought back with them to keep working. The silence stretched awkwardly between them as they moved about trying not to accidentally touch. Dean wasn't even sure why he was so upset over Sam wanting to stay behind and keep researching. It wasn't like he'd really expected anything else from him. Sam hadn't really made an effort to get to know Sage, they were in the middle of a hunt with no end game, and yes, this time of day Dean devoted to the kid.

But something in Dean still wanted something resembling normal. Or as normal as they were ever likely to get considering their highly illegal relationship and the world they lived in. Dean wanted that little slice of normal, even if it was only for a couple of hours. He didn't want to have the weight of the world resting on his shoulders. And he wanted to have that slice of normal with Sam there with him. Wouldn't be worth much if he didn't have Sam.

Sage came out of the bathroom and wandered over to where Dean was fussing with his keys. Dean smiled down to her, reaching his hand down to hold hers. "Lets hit the road, kiddo," he said, forcing a smile on his face.

They were nearly out the door when Sam called out to him, making Dean stop and look back.

Sam was just a few feet from him when he reached out and drew Dean to him. He pressed a soft, apologetic kiss to his mouth before stepping back. "Try not to bring all the dirt from the park back here with you."

  
~*~*~

They were both covered in dirt and grass stains when they got back to the motel room a few hours later. Dean had decided on the walk back that a bath for both of them was in order. If only to keep Sammy from pulling his bitch face on them when they started tracking leaves all over the place.

It was early yet when they walked into the room, Sage smothering her giggles in Dean's shoulder. Dean's light mood quickly evaporated when he took in just what was waiting for them in the room.

Ruby was sprawled out on one of the beds. Sam was sitting in a chair close by, elbows planted on his thighs. Dean wasn't sure what to think. He knew Sammy had slept with Ruby while he'd been in Hell. And it wasn't like Dean could really hold it against him. He'd been dead after all, and he'd told Sammy to move on with his life. He just hadn't counted on coming back and being forced to acknowledge that information every time he saw the demon.

"Sam," Dean said. _What the hell is she doing here?_ went unspoken, but asked in Dean's tone.

"Figured out how to stop Laurie Dunn from raising the Rawhead," Sam answered. "We can't use reason on her, but we can scare her."

Ruby sat up on the bed, a bright smile directed towards Sage. "Hey there, sweetie."

Sage waved shyly from Dean's arms. And Dean still wasn't sure why Sage liked Ruby over Sam, except that maybe it was because Ruby was a woman and Sam very obviously didn't know what to do with her.

Sage wiggled until Dean put her down. Once her feet were on the floor Sage went straight for Ruby, presenting her with a twig she'd picked up from the park. Dean watched as Ruby accepted the twig and examined it carefully, with the same seriousness that Sage had presented it to her with.

"You got this at the park you went to with Dean?" she asked. Sage nodded and started digging in her pockets for the other little bits of nature she'd brought back with her.

There was a small sense of relief when she did that. If she was connecting with another person aside from Dean then there had to be a chance that she'd be okay. Dean hadn't realized just how worried he'd been about the possibility that the kid might be more damaged than Dean thought he might be able to fix.

"So you figured out a way to keep that woman from summoning a Rawhead?" Dean asked. He turned away from Sage and Ruby, putting his attention on Sam instead.

~*~*~

"You know, this is the stupidest plan I've ever heard of," Dean hissed.

Ruby snorted a few feet to his right. "That's a load of shit. You and Sam have come up with stupider plans than this before."

Dean couldn't really argue that. They had come up with some pretty stupid plans in the past. But the difference here was _he and Sam_ had come up with those plans. And _he and Sam_ were the ones that carried them out.

Dean trusted his brother. He didn't trust Ruby further than he could toss her soaking wet and weighted down with bricks. He was convinced that the demon had ulterior motives for messing with Sammy's life. Dean just couldn't figure out what they were.

And here Dean was hiding in the kitchen of the little house that Laurie Dunn lived in, waiting for the woman to come home. He'd gone and left Sam back at the motel room with Sage. And that hadn't been a pleasant argument to have. Because Sam _knew_ Dean didn't like going on hunts with anyone other than him. _Knew_ Dean would rather go alone than trust his life or a plan with anyone else.

But Dean didn't want to leave Sage alone after abandoning her at the day care already. He'd won the argument when he'd pointed out that they'd need someone to be ready and able to get to the Blackburn Facility if they found out Laurie had already raised the Rawhead. And Sam hadn't liked the idea of Dean going to hunt another Rawhead. Not after the last time. So they'd come up with this plan instead.

The plan was a simple one.

Wait for Laurie to get home. Trap her in her own kitchen, then Ruby would perform a simple spell that was usually used to break a witch from the source of her powers. Of course, Ruby had never actually performed the spell before. And the spell hadn't been used in over four centuries. And there was no telling how long it would be before Laurie Dunn got home, or if she would be coming home alone.

There were so many holes in the plan it made Dean twitchy.

He didn't like it.

But it wasn't like there was a second option. At least not one Dean wanted to take. Because Dean didn't like the idea of killing a human woman who hadn't actually done anything to deserve being killed.

He heard the lock turning on the side door. He hadn't even heard a car pull up to the house yet.

"Get ready," Ruby whispered and moved off to the side.

The side door led right into the kitchen. Dean moved off to one side, pulling his gun from where he'd tucked it into the back of his pants. He was seriously going to need to invest in a proper pant holster for the damn thing. Sweat and dead skin meant he had to clean it more often and increased the likelihood of it jamming on him one day when he needed it.

Laurie turned the lights on as soon as she was through the door, before she'd even closed it. Dean waited until she'd kicked the door shut before stepping forward and cocking the gun. It was more for dramatic effect than necessity. But the sound did exactly what it was supposed to do.

Laurie stopped cold in her tracks. She didn't try to turn around. Dean wasn't even sure she was breathing.

"You've been a very, very bad girl," Ruby announced from the other side of the kitchen.

She stepped into the light, eyes black and soulless.

"Who are you?" Laurie demanded. Dean had to give her some credit for keeping a steady voice.

"We are your Judge and Jury, Ms. Dunn," Ruby answered softly. She took a gliding step to one side, coming face to face with Laurie Dunn for the first time.

"What do you want from me?" she demanded.

She started to lower her arms, but Dean stepped forward and pressed the muzzle of the gun between her shoulder blades and a little to the left. He couldn't miss her heart from this distance, and if she forced him to shoot, at least he could take comfort in the fact she wasn't going to suffer.

"Keep your hands up," Dean growled. His head was starting to throb.

"Mr. Tyler?"

"Executioner," Ruby corrected.

"What--?"

"Do you have any idea what a Rawhead and Bloody Bones actually does to kids?" Dean demanded. He needed to know. He wasn't sure why, but he needed to know. Ruby was already chanting the spell from where she was standing next to the kitchen sink. Dean's head was starting to throb in time with her voice.

"I don't know what you're talking about!" Laurie's voice started wavering then. Real fear lacing the words.

Dean sneered at her back. "You were going to summon a Rawhead at the detention center to deal with the kids there," he snapped. "How were you planning to hide the missing kids? Explain them away as runaways?"

"What? No!"

"You're lying," he said. Dean didn't even recognize the voice coming from his mouth. Didn't know where that dark and dangerous tone was coming from. All he could think about was the last time he'd hunted a Rawhead. The little pile of bone fragments that were left after a half dozen kids had fallen victim.

"I'm not," the woman pleaded. "I swear, I'm not lying to you. I don't know what a Rawhead is!"

Dean could hear the chattering of little voice over Ruby's chanting, but under the throbbing in his head. They sounded like they were coming from another room, little voices. Kids voices. All talking at once.

"How many of them have you already killed?" he demanded, pressing the gun more firmly into the woman's back.

She didn't answer.

Ruby's voice faltered on the silence in the room.

The chattering just got louder.

"How many!?"

"I don't know what you're talking about, Mr. Tyler," Laurie answered. Her voice far too even.

Suddenly Ruby started chanting again. Voice stronger than before. Dean wasn't sure how he knew but he was certain she was using a different spell this time.

He was proven right when she reached for one of the kitchen knives and sliced open her palm and switched to Latin. He recognized the words then. Understood enough of what she was saying and doing, to see the spell for what it was.

A death spell.

Dean took a step back, keeping his gun pointed at Laurie's back.

"You won't get away with this you know," Laurie said conversationally.

Dean smiled at her when she turned around. It felt like a sick twist of the lips, even to himself. And it must have looked it because Dean watched her flinch away from that smile.

~*~*~

"Pack our shit," Dean said as soon as he got through motel room door.

Sam looked up, confused, from his laptop. He had papers and print offs scattered around him in a dizzying display of clashing colours. Dean didn't look to closely at what was written on those pages. He had enough shit to deal with as it was.

"Dean," Ruby called, demanding his attention.

He just ignored them both, blocked out Sam's confused looks and Ruby's pissed off stance, and went right for the bags. He just started shoveling shit into them. They needed to leave. Dean didn't want to stick around for morning when people at the Blackburn Facility started looking for their crazy director.

Sam got up and started gathering his papers and shutting down the laptop. "What's going on, Dean?" Sam asked as he packed up.

"Ask your girlfriend," Dean snapped harshly and went for the bathroom. He was on edge. That was the only excuse he had for being cruel to Sam right then.

"Ruby?" Dean heard Sam question in an undertone. They were all arguing in quiet voices to keep from waking Sage. "What went wrong?"

"We used a different spell," Ruby started to explain.

Dean came out of the bathroom then, bags of toiletries under one arm. "Not _we_," he corrected and jammed the toiletry bags into the first duffel he came to. "You changed the spell. Not me."

"Fine," Ruby huffed. "_I_ changed the spell."

Sam looked even more confused but just as concerned then. Dean could almost see the _'I told you so'_ written on Sam's face, he was just waiting for the moment to be justified in saying it. "What spell did you use?"

Ruby was quiet for a moment, just watching them move about the room collecting their things. Sam was packing up the few guns and knives they'd had out, while Dean was trying to get Sage's clothes into one of the bags without bursting the zipper.

"A three fold spell," she finally answered. "Everything she'd ever done to those kids would be brought back to her three fold. Every moment of suffering or pain or misery she'd inflicted on them would come back to her."

"Death spell," Dean simplified. Not that he thought Sam needed the simplification. But Dean needed the truth to be out in the open. He was tired of lying to his brother. Because he'd help condemn a human woman to a brutal kind of death.

Dean closed the last duffel bag and set it at the foot of the bed before moving over to where Sage was sleeping. They'd all been careful to keep their voices pitched low so as not to disturb her sleep. The last thing Dean wanted to do was wake the kid up in the middle of an argument she wouldn't understand.

"I still want to know how you knew she'd already killed some of those kids," Ruby said softly.

Dean stiffened and refused to turn around. That was not a conversation he wanted to have with Ruby before he'd even had it with Sam. Sam deserved to hear it first, deserved to have a chance to let the knowledge sink in a little before Ruby found out. Dean's honesty began and ended with Sam - _though it now included Sage, too_ \- not the demon bitch.

"I think it's time you left," Same said gently behind him.

Dean could hear them moving towards to door. Knew Sam was leading Ruby out of the room and away from him. Dean might have a developed a very slim bit of respect for the demon, but it didn't stretch very far most days.

Dean heard them exchange a few words at the door, but he couldn't make them out and he didn't care what they were saying. Not really. He just wanted to get them packed up and gone before the police came looking for them to question. There was nothing linking them to Laurie Dunn's death. Nothing physical anyway, because there wouldn't be a mark on her body to provide cause of death and Dean had been careful to wipe down any surface that might have taken his prints.

Reaching out, Dean smooth the hair out of Sage's face, tucking it behind her ear. _He wasn't going to risk getting picked up and locked up in some cage again. Not after the promises he'd made._

"Okay, you really need to explain what the fuck is going on, Dean," Sam told him, stepping up to stand next to him.

When Dean didn't say anything, Sam reached out to him. Callused fingers ghosting over the back of his neck, just enough of a touch to let Dean know Sam was still there, still with him.

"I could hear them," Dean finally answered. He didn't look away from the sleeping form of the little girl. He wasn't sure what expression would be filtering across Sam's face, but he was sure that he didn't want to know what it was. Not yet at least.

"You could hear them?" Sam repeated, confused.

Dean nodded slowly and licked his lips. "I - Ruby was performing the spell to break her," he explained. "And I could hear their voices, like they were just down the hall in another room. Not enough to make out actual words, but enough to know they were there."

Silence stretched out between them. But Sam didn't move his hand from the back of Dean's neck. He didn't step away from his brother. Dean hadn't realized just how worried he'd been that Sam would leave him for this. The relief that washed through him when Sam actually stepped closer and let their bodies make brief and gentle contact was like finding acceptance all over again.

Closing his eyes tightly, Dean turned his head and leaned back into Sam's body. Let his brother take some of his weight, and just bathed in the acceptance he felt when Sam ran his fingers through his hair.

"When..." Sam started but stopped as though figuring out the answer on his own.

"When I got kidnapped," Dean explained. "I'm pretty sure I was sleeping, but I had a conversation with Sage's mother. She had to have already been dead for at least a day before I was brought there."

Swallowing, Dean forced himself to continue. Sammy was the only person in the world he could be completely honest with, and those omissions had felt just as bad as lying. "When I escaped, they - fuck, it was like they just melted out of the walls."

Sam didn't push Dean for more information. Didn't try to get Dean talking. He just let Dean tell his story his own way. "Shades," Dean said. "They weren't ghosts or spirits, but actual shades. And I don't really know what happened. One minute I'm being led to my death, and the next there's a couple dozen shades filling the room and gaining substance."

"Shit," Sam breathed and held on to Dean a little more tightly.

"Yeah," Dean chuckled without any real sense of amusement.

"We could hunt him, you know," Sam offered.

Dean tilted his head back and looked up to Sammy's face. The sincerity he saw there made Dean's skin itch - not to get away but to get closer. Because Sam was the only one who would offer something like that. The only person who would give Dean the chance to face something that honestly scared the shit out of him instead of trying to wrap him up in a security blanket.

"Bobby said that the second ritual was already complete," Sam went on. "Your soul is already bound to this guy if you die before breaking that bond."

"What else did Bobby have to say?" Dean asked. He stayed in contact with his brother, trying to communicate the fact he wasn't really upset with the idea that Sam had called the older hunter. It wasn't like they could travel with the kind of library Bobby had set up in his home.

Sam shrugged a little and took a step back. "That psychic abilities are just as unique as the person who has them. That there was no way to tell what kind of abilities you might have developed because of the first ritual."

Dean hummed a little and got up to grab one of the blankets to wrap Sage in. "So your older brother can see and hear dead people. Think you can deal with it?"

"I'm just happy you can't read minds," Sam answered.

  
++++


	5. Chapter 5

**Part Five**

Two weeks and three states later, they were no closer to finding Clayton Reynolds than they had been when they started. It wasn't like they had much to go on beyond a name. He wasn't in any of the police databases Sam had searched, and there were a surprisingly large number of Clayton Reynolds in the United States.

Dean could see Sam's frustration at the lack of progress.

With no results to show for his work, Sam had switched focuses. He'd gone from hunting the man who'd taken Dean to researching Dean's abilities. It was sort of a toss up on which aggravated his brother more - the search for a man that couldn't be found or documentation on a rare ability that was vague at the very best of times and useless at the worst. For his part, Dean just continued to ignore it.

An act that was getting increasingly more difficult as the days passed.

Aside from the first two instance the worst Dean had suffered was listening to the constant chatter of the dead. Voices he could hear in a distant, detached sort of way. He couldn't actually make out what they were saying, it was more like white noise in the background. Something he could drown out with music or the TV and when that didn't work he was usually able to ignore it.

And then that changed. He could still hear them, but suddenly he was able to make out the actual words they were saying. It came as both a relief and a new level of frustration to understand those voices. Because he could understand them, but they couldn't hear him.

It wasn't until Dean could actually _see_ them that they became a real problem. Because they could and did pass through and ignore the rest of the world around them like it didn't exist. But to Dean they had a physical substance. He could reach out his hand and touch them and they felt real to him. Just as real as Sam or Sage felt. It wasn't until they got close enough for him to smell them that the differences became obvious.

People had a smell - soaps and perfumes and sweat. The dead didn't.

He'd actually had a rather enlightening conversation with a woman at one of the parks he took Sage to about how best to handle a traumatized kid before he'd realized she was dead. She'd been a social worker before she died, and the things she told Dean about the kids she'd helped made his skin crawl.

But dead or not, Dean had listened to her. She'd told him things he already knew - give her time and space, don't smother her or rush her, but keep encouraging her to make connections and contact with others. She gave him signs to look out for for figuring out if there had been any other abuse and Dean had sort of wished he'd brought a note book with him that day.

In the end, the woman had actually thanked him for letting her help another kid. And that had thrown Dean. Because every other ghost or spirit he'd had the misfortune to run into hadn't known they were dead.

It was the uncomfortable look on his brother's face that sealed the deal for Dean. He hadn't bothered to look around at the expressions and reactions of other people when he had those conversations with people that weren't actually there. Sage had never reacted oddly or badly when he did it. Sam, though... Sam would get this scrunched up look on his face every time it happened, like he'd just bitten into something sour and was trying to not pull a face.

So Dean had stopped talking to people who weren't Sam or Sage when his brother was around. He only made friendly conversation with people Sam had already spoken with. It made him feel more isolated and different. Like he was living in some kind of bubble and the only things not distorted were his brother and the kid he'd rescued from that basement.

~*~*~

They were in some shitty little motel in another shitty little town when Dean guessed Sam either hit pay dirt or had finally had enough.

He was waiting for Dean when he got back from taking Sage to the local playground. It was the middle of the afternoon, but they hadn't been on a hunt since Sam had started looking for Clayton Reynolds. Dean had begun to take Sage out more often, just like the dead social worker recommended, leaving Sam to his research and his brooding - _but never without offering an invitation to go with them, something Sammy always declined without giving a reason_.

"We gotta talk, Dean," Sam announced seriously when they entered the room. He had a bunch of papers neatly stacked next to him on the table and a couple of books opened to what Dean figured were important passages.

Those papers and books spoke volumes on the subject Sam wanted to cover in their talk. The blank expression on his brother's face had more to do with just how much Dean was going to like having it. If Sammy was already dreading just bringing the topic up, Dean already knew they were in trouble - or at least he was.

"We just came back to get something to eat," Dean informed Sam. "We're heading back to the park in a few."

"This isn't a conversation that can wait," Sam told him firmly.

Dean had no doubt that was true. When Sammy got something in his head he usually did it. Come hell or high water, what Samuel Winchester wanted, he got. Dean had a feeling he was mostly to blame for Sam's semi-spoiled attitude. But the rest was just pure confident Sammy, something Dean couldn't resist most of the time.

At least before, anyway. Now he was usually too wrung out or tired to be interested in much of anything beyond the little routines he'd created for himself. _Get up, shower, take Sage to a park or playground, eat, nap, go back out to the park or playground, come back to the room and crash. _That didn't really leave a lot of quality time for Sam these days.

Dean shrugged at Sam and pulled some of the sandwiches from the mini-fridge. "If it can't wait, then come with us," Dean offered.

Sage had gone right for her bag to pull out the scrap book Dean had picked up for her the week before. It had been another suggestion from the dead social worker - help her develop a healthy hobby that made her feel safe and comfortable, but was still something she could share if she wanted. Sage had taken to collecting and keeping the bits of nature she found at the parks Dean took her to.

Looking back to his brother, Dean caught the tight look on Sam's face. Knew his brother was debating pitching a fit to get his way. Dean just reached into the fridge again and pulled out a couple bottles of water.

Dean knew that Sam knew that as soon as they got back, Dean would be up long enough to get Sage cleaned up, fed, and ready for bed before he was down for the count. Since Dean was forgoing his typical afternoon nap, his level of exhaustion would be multiplied exponentially by each hour Dean forced himself to stay awake.

"Fine," Sam huffed and reached for his stack of papers and books. Careful to mark the pages he had them opened to, he stuffed it all into one of the backpacks they'd taken to carrying around and added in the food Dean passed over to him. Sage even edged close enough to hand Sam her scrap book.

Sam froze when Sage held up her scrap book. Dean wasn't able to catch most of the emotions flickering like lightening across his brother faces. But he could name enough of them - _confusion, uncertainty, acceptance_. Dean was nearly overwhelmed by the sudden rush of relief that hit him. He'd known Sam had some issue with keeping Sage with them, known it might take a while before they warmed up to one another - if ever. Now that the two most important parts of his life were actually being more than silently civil with one another, Dean was scared out of his mind.

He'd long ago learned to deal with and accept the fact that Sammy would always be the single most important person in his life. That his world began and ended with his brother and the world wasn't worth saving, never mind living in, if he didn't have Sam. Dean had never expected to feel that way about anyone else. Had never expected to find that he could or would ever care that deeply or love that unconditionally for another human being.

And yet, in that one little moment, Dean watched his world both contract and expand when Sam carefully accepted the scrap book and tucked it into the back pack with everything else.

"All set?" Dean managed to ask.

Sam just nodded and Sage was already looking up at him expectantly.

Dean forced a little of the enthusiasm he knew he felt into his voice. "Then let's get back to the playground. I wanna see if I can still jump further than Sammy."

"Dude," Sam said with false offense. "There's no way you can beat my record." He shouldered the backpack and made for the motel room door. "The best you did was seven feet to my twelve."

Dean just smirked at Sam as he passed him on the way out, Sage's hand safely tucked in his own. "Yeah, but you're out of practice, Sammy. I've been going to the park religiously for the last few weeks. It's been years since you got on a swing."

~*~*~

Sam wasn't entirely sure what he had expected when they got the playground.

He hadn't gone with them because he figured his brother needed some time away from him. That he might want a little space that didn't have Sam in it. Living the way they did, they were constantly in each other's pockets and personal space. Leaving little to no room for anything that didn't involve one another. And that wasn't healthy.

But the thing was, Sam had forgotten that they had never done very well with stuff that was supposed to be healthy when it came to relationships. Not with the way they had been raised, not with the shit they saw on a daily bases. And it made him kind of sad for all of them - him, Dean and Sage. Sad because they were never going to get normal, or the things they were supposed to want out of life. The world and Fate had different ideas for them.

Watching his brother push a giggling and squealing little girl on a swing just sort of brought that home for him. Between the two of them, Dean had a better chance at getting the kind of life he was supposed to want than Sam did. Sam had tried, and failed, to get normal. He'd learned to accept that.

But Dean could have _normal_ or so close to it that it wouldn't make much of a difference. Dean's wants and desires from life were simple in their complexity. Family, safety, stability. Dean could have that, but he'd never go out and get those things for himself.

But that was before.

Before Dean had rescued a kid and decided to keep her.

Kids made all the difference. Sam had learned that after the one and only pregnancy scare he and Jess ever had. The world just sort of tilted on its axis when the life of an innocent child got weighed in the balance of everything else.

The world would be both a better and darker place if Dean ever decided to devote his life to parenting instead of hunting.

When Dean brought Sage over to where Sam had set out a blanket and food, Sam caught some of the unhappy looks sent their way from the other families in the park. He ignored them easily since neither he nor Dean were usually demonstrative in public. And if anyone was rude enough to actually come up to them and ask if they were a couple, they could tell the truth - _or one of the versions of it_.

"Can we talk now?" Sam asked once they'd gotten most of the way through their lunch.

Dean was still just picking at his food. Taking tiny little bites instead of just wolfing down the food like he used to do. Sage, on the other hand, was working her way steadily through her sandwich and watching Dean with serious little eyes as though she could will him to eat more.

It made Sam feel... he wasn't sure, but it was better than the worry. Sam was pretty sure that made him a horrible person, that a little kid's worry made him feel better.

Sage held up empty hands to Dean before Sam got an answer.

The action seemed to mean something to his brother, because Dean nodded is head and said, "All right, go and get outta here."

Sage grinned at them and took off to poke around some bushes that were just starting to bud.

Sam watched Dean watch Sage for a moment before repeating his question.

When Dean turned back to him, the happy carefree expression was gone. Replaced with something more serious and a little more reserved. It made Sam's chest ache to see his brother pulling up his walls like that. But with the way things had been between them lately, he couldn't exactly say he blamed Dean.

"I - I think I found something," Sam finally said. When Dean nodded his head for him to continue Sam just sort of pushed it all out. "There isn't much of anything out there about what happens to the people who get the kind of ritual that was done to you. What little there was is really sort of gruesome in details about how they just sort of lost their minds and burned themselves out... literally in some cases."

"Great news," Dean responded with sarcasm.

Sam just rolled his eyes and kept going. "But I started digging on what kind of psychic ability you might have now. It was sort of a toss up between a Medium and an honest to god Necromancer," Sam told him, reaching for his bag and the papers in it. "And with everything you've told me so far, I'm leaning more heavily towards Necromancer than Medium."

"And what exactly does that mean to the layman?" Dean asked.

There was a pinched look around his mouth, a tightening about the eyes, that told Sam Dean already knew. That he just wanted Sam to tell him or prove him wrong. "If you were just a Medium, it'd be simple. A couple of charms and a little practice and you could block them all out." Handing over the papers Sam added, "But with Necromancy, it means you can't just block it out. You have to learn to control it."

Dean looked down at the papers Sam had given him. Sam knew he wasn't going to read them. Not there in the park. But he had them now. He had everything that Sam knew in his hands. "And if I just keep ignoring it?" Dean asked, not looking up from the papers.

"It'll kill you," Sam said flatly.

Dean nodded his head and shuffled the papers a little in his hands before he looked back up. "What if I can't learn how to control it? I mean, where do I even begin to learn how to do that? It's not like we can just go looking for a reference manual or anything."

Dean's frustration and anger hadn't really been what Sam was expecting. He'd worried more about Dean just shrugging it off than anything. That was what Dean did best, denial. "I don't know to be honest," Sam said softly. "But we'll figure something out."

Dean nodded his head and turned to watch something at the other end of the park. "Sam?"

"Yeah, Dean."

"Don't make it obvious," Dean started, turning his head back towards where Sage was digging something out of the dirt. "But I want you to look over by that big tree about fifty feet away and tell me if you see a kid peeking around it."

Sam reached over to pick up the plastic wrap their sandwiches had been in, turning his gaze towards the tree Dean was talking about and looking for the kid. He didn't see anything, just the tree and struggling grass. "No kid," Sam told him as he sat back and stuffed the garbage back into his bag. "Why?"

"Because he's a haunt that's been following me through the last four towns we stopped in," Dean answered.

~*~*~

  
It was getting on to early evening when Dean called an end to the day. He's spent the better part of the afternoon digging in the dirt and around bushes looking for new treasures to add to Sage's scrap book. Sammy had even gotten in on the fun and come up with some kind of blue flower thing that made the kid literally jump in excitement before carefully adding it between the pages in the scrap book.

Dean ended up laughing at his brother's confused pleasure in the delight Sage took from adding Sam's find.

They were walking back to the room when Dean realized they were being followed. He didn't need to look back to know it was the kid he'd mentioned to Sam in the park. He'd been trailing Dean for days and Dean had sort of gotten used to the way the kid's gaze would make the skin on the back of his neck try to crawl off.

Swinging Sage up into his arms just to see her smile, Dean was careful not to look back and spook the kid. "Don't react," he told Sam. "But we're being followed by the kid I told you about."

Sam shifted the backpack from one shoulder to other and asked, "What do you want to do about it? If only you can see him I don't think rock salt is going to be of much use."

And that was the real piss off. Most of the things that usually kept them safe from wandering supernatural creatures and spirits looking for vengeance were useless in fending off Dean's stalkers. Salt lines didn't keep them out and Dean had already tried blasting a few of the more persistent ones with rock salt and iron.

Nothing had worked. It just freaked them out, which meant Dean had to calm them down. Which meant Dean had to interact with them. Which made Sam uncomfortable.

_It was a never ending cycle_.

"I'm going to try talking to him," Dean said finally.

"You sure that's a good idea?" Sam asked.

Dean shrugged. He was pretty sure it was a bad idea, but not because he thought it would be dangerous. More because he didn't need any new nightmares and whatever had happened to this kid was probably going to add to them.

"He's been following us for days," Dean answered. "Whatever got him to do that must be pretty important."

Sam grumbled a response Dean chose to ignore and turned his attention to Sage instead. "You go on back to the room with Sammy, okay, sweetheart?"

She frowned at him and curled her fingers tightly into his shirt. "Why?" she asked.

Dean kept his surprise from his face when she spoke. Treating the act like an every day occurrence. The dead social worker had warned him not to make a big deal over the fact she didn't speak, or over react when she did. Warning him it would probably make her more shy and less willing to come out of her shell if she felt forced into it.

"Because I need to talk to the boy who's been following us," Dean explained. "And I don't want to scare him away."

"'kay," she said softly and let herself be transferred from Dean's arms to Sam's.

Dean watched as they made the turn back to the motel room before turning in the opposite direction.

Dean started looking for a semi secluded place to stop at as soon as he crossed the street. There wasn't much down the road, and everything was out in the open. A few houses with fences up around the front yards really. But the kid kept following him, which made Dean look harder for a place to stop.

He found what he was looking for three blocks and a right turn later.

An open, empty soccer field.

Jumping the fence, Dean made a bee line for one of the further goal posts. There was no place for the kid to hide out there. Dean just hoped the kid didn't take too long to approach him. After a day out in the sun, playing make believe games and hunting for natural treasures, he was exhausted and even the cold unyielding line of the goal post was starting to look like a luxury bed.

Settling himself down, Dean prepared to wait.

~*~*~

"You know I can't hurt you, right?" Dean called out in a gentle tone.

The sun was kissing the horizon and he'd been waiting almost two and half hours for the kid to come to him. Only the boy had hung back, lurking along the edges of the fence behind Dean, still out of sight.

He wondered for a brief moment if he'd frightened the kid off by speaking to him. It wouldn't be the first time it happened. Glancing over his shoulder, Dean checked to see if the kid had taken off on him. He wasn't going to stick around waiting for someone who'd disappeared on him

Only the boy had frozen halfway through the fence around the field. He was staring right at Dean. It was the first time the kid had been close enough for Dean to make out the features of his face. He looked like an average eight or nine year old boy, except for his eyes. His eyes which had no pupils, just solid circles of coloured irises.

"Why don't you come on over here," Dean said, patting the ground near him. "There's nothing out here that's going to hurt you."

Still the kid hesitated before taking a small step forward and asking, "You can see me?"

He sounded surprised and pleased and frightened all at once.

"Sure can," Dean told him, leaning back against the pole. "C'n even hear you too. I know you've been following me for a few days now."

"Didn't think you saw'd me," the boy told him, creeping a little closer.

Dean waited until the kid was standing just a few feet away from him, off to one side. He still looked uncertain and hesitant. Scuffing his shoe on the ground where he left no mark. Dean rolled his head to one side and regarded the kid with a curious look. "Was wondering if there was a special reason you started following me from place to place."

The kid shrugged and kicked a loose rock. The rock stayed exactly where it was, but the kid looked up as though watching it bounce along the ground. "You was the first person who walked 'round me," he said finally. "All them others, they just walked through me like I weren't there or nothin'."

Dean nodded as if that made any kind of sense. And he was pretty sure that it did, or at least it would if he weren't so fucking tired. There had to have been other people who'd walked around the kid. There were enough people in the world who had some low grade psychic ability to have felt him.

"Why didn't you just come talk to me?" Dean asked.

The boy sniffled then and wrapped his thin arms tightly around his chest. "'Cause I tried 'fore and no one never heard me," he told Dean in a little voice. "I'd scream an' cry an' try to grab 'em and no one heard me and I gots scared and lost and I want to go home."

Rolling up to his knees, Dean reached out and pulled to kid towards him. Those thin shoulders shook under his hands as he cried tears that never actually fell or left a wet mark on Dean's shirt. Dean rubbed useless circles into his back and made soft soothing sounds, to try and calm him.

"Hey," Dean whispered into the top of his head. "Hey, it's going to be okay," he promised. "I'll bring you back home."

~*~*~

Dean had waited until Sam and Sage were both sound asleep before he got up that night.

He had Sammy's cell phone clutched in one hand as he slipped on his boots and slipped out the motel room door, careful to close it quietly behind him. He didn't want to wake either of them up. Sage because she was just a kid and needed her sleep. And Sam because then he'd have to explain why he'd taken his cell phone in the first place when they both knew Dean's got the better reception.

Scrolling through the contact list, Dean hit the TALK button before he had a chance to change his mind. Even then, between the time it took to connect the call and for three rings to pass, Dean nearly talked himself into hanging up.

It was the call getting answered that stopped him.

Well that and what got said too.

"_It's the middle of the night, Sam,_" Ruby complained. "_Dean's just dealing with a lot of shit. Same as you'd be if your positions were reversed. He's not going to leave you to set up house just because he's showering attention and affection on the girl._" Dean blinked, open mouthed, at the hard tone she was using. "_You're still the most important thing in his world. And if, for whatever reason, Dean _has_ actually left you, you shouldn't be on the phone with me, but finding a car to steal and groveling at your brother's feet to fix whatever it was you did._

"_Go back to bed, okay?"_ And there was more compassion in that last bit than Dean had been expecting. It was obvious that this wasn't the first time Ruby had done this speech ~~before~~. That Sam had been calling her and confessing his insecurities to the demon. It sort of surprised Dean that Sam had even told Ruby about their highly controversial type of relationship. Not that Ruby would have stones to throw.

Dean opened and closed his mouth a couple of times before he spoke. "Sam thinks I'm going to leave him?" That was the most important question Dean could think of. And he hadn't really thought it through.

"_Dean?_" Ruby's surprise and confusion came across clearly through the line.

"Sam really thinks I'm going to leave him?" he repeated.

Silence followed his repeated question. And the only reason Dean didn't check to see if Ruby had disconnect the call from her end was because of the way it sort of swelled as the seconds passed. It made Dean feel a little better about his brother's continued acquaintance with the demon after hearing her very obvious hesitation to answer.

It was either that, or Sam had done something to frighten the level of loyalty Ruby was displaying with her hesitation.

"_What did you really expect him to think?_" Ruby finally asked. "_After that fight the two of you had and you showing back up with a kid in tow? It all seems to fit that conclusion._"

Dean just shook his head before he realized she couldn't actually see him. "I'm not going to leave him to set up house," he told her, frowning at the motel room door.

Ruby sighed tiredly over the phone. "_I know that. But the Sam-logic your brother is using is sort of skipping over the fact not only did you sell your soul to get him back when he died, but that you went to Hell for him too._"

Dean ran his hand over his face, feeling stubble scrape his palm. "I don't really know what to do to make him believe I'm not going anywhere," Dean said more to himself than to Ruby. "What makes him think I'm planning to ditch him?"

Ruby was quiet again. Dean could almost see the demon woman weighing her options, making a list of pros and cons for answering Dean's questions. Dean wondered just how deep her loyalty to his brother ran.

"_Sam isn't used to sharing you,_" she finally said. "_He's not good at sharing period. Which I think is mostly your fault._"

Dean didn't bother to address the last statement, mostly because it was probably true. He'd always had a hell of a time saying no to his brother. Couldn't actively deny him anything he needed or wanted when it was in his power to give. "So it's just because of Sage," he said, licking his lips and considering.

"_Mostly,_" Ruby confirmed. "_He doesn't know how to share you because he's never had to. After the fight you two had just before you got taken, it's been his biggest concern._"

It was Dean's turn to sigh and rub tiredly at his eyes. The chattering he'd managed to push to the back of his mind was trying to creep up on him. And he knew that the dead kid was lurking a couple hundred yards away, just watching him with those creepy eyes of his. _Christ, he'd give his left hand to be able to just shake a stick and make everything all right again_.

"_Dean?_" Ruby's voice drifted above all the background noise in his head. "_If you weren't calling to ask about Sam, then why did you call me?_"

Dean hesitated this time. He didn't really know what to say, just knew he was kind of desperate and willing to take the risk. "I - Sam told you that after I got taken I developed my own kind of psychic abilities?"

"_He didn't really go into details,_" Ruby offered.

Dean nodded and rubbed at the back of his neck before asking, "What do you know about Necromancy and Necromancers in general?"

There was a pregnant pause before, "_Holy shit_."

"Not really the answer I was looking for," Dean quipped.

"_That's what you got? You got Necromancy out of all the tricks the bag had to offer?_"

"Luck's a real bitch sometimes."

"_No shit,_" Ruby breathed over the line. There was another moments silence before she pulled out her 'business' tone of voice. "_I've only ever met two real Necromancers... well three now if you're right. But I've heard talk of a handful more. The stories aren't nice ones, Dean. You really got the short end of the stick on this one._

  
"_Necromancers have power and control over the dead. The more powerful the Necromancer the more types of dead they can summon and control. The two I knew were pretty powerful, but still weak when it came to actually using their gift. They needed blood sacrifices to summon spirits, the bigger the sacrifice the older the spirit. But there was one who didn't need blood sacrifices at all. Ghosts and spirits just sort of followed her or found her._"

"Did you ever hear about a Necromancer who didn't learn to control their ability or just sort of ignored it?"

"_Four... The end wasn't pretty, Dean. Three of them just went crazy and ended up either getting killed or killing themselves, no one's sure, through accidents. The other one... if even half of what I heard is true, he faded. Just... sort of wasted away until he was little better than a shade. According to the story, it took three full covens to bind him and destroy him._

"_Dean, if you really are a Necromancer, no matter how weak or strong you are, you have to learn how to control it. You can't - Ignoring it isn't going to make it go away. It's just going to make things worse. You'll end up raising spirits without meaning to because the power has nowhere else to go, no focus to keep it under wraps. Most of those ghosts will go back to rest on their own, but some of them are going to be strong enough to sustain themselves._

"_And that kind of uncontrolled power is going to eat away at you. You'll either turn in to what you are supposed to be controlling or you're going to become something that needs to be put down for the safety of everyone else._"

+++++

  



	6. Chapter 6

**Part Six**

There wasn't much for Dean to do while they were on the road.

He was still too exhausted to be trusted behind the wheel of the car - _which pissed him off to no end_ \- and Sage had her scrap book and colouring books to keep her busy. Dean turned to the print outs and books Sam had gotten his hands on - _stolen from a library_ \- and settled himself in to some serious reading.

After his late night conversation with Ruby the day before they left, Dean didn't really know what else he was supposed to do. He couldn't keep ignoring what he could do if Ruby was telling just half the truth. But he was pretty sure she hadn't been lying to him. And Sammy, who had done his own research into what Dean could do, had said some of the same things to him. That, in the end, it would kill him to keep pushing it off to one side. _Not that he could easily do that anymore. Between listening and seeing the dead, Dean only had to glance out a window to see fucking road kill_ _following them around._

Given the limited texts he had to read from, Dean wasn't really sure what he was supposed to believe. Ruby had only ever _met_ a few Necromancers. She hadn't befriended them, hadn't learned at their knee or anything. It wasn't like Dean could just wander up to someone's house and ask them to teach him.

There were no living necromancers.

Aside from him.

If he that was actually what he was.

While most of what he'd read had been pretty useless, there had been some references to other books and pieces littered through out. Dean wasn't even sure how Sam and Bobby had gotten their hands on those texts, but they'd come through for him. Even found him translated pieces when the literature came in a language Dean couldn't read.

That had been three days ago, though.

Dean had had more than enough time to get through it all. It wasn't like there was all that much of it to begin with. Fucking history, which usually was his friend and teacher, seemed out to screw him in this case. Either that or every previous living necromancer had been a paranoid son of a bitch and hadn't bothered to leave much in the way of journals or documents behind. Probably because they had either gone crazy at some point or been destroyed.

Pulling the covers up around Sage's shoulders, Dean settled down before the little table in the corner to wait for Sam to get back from country records.

Sam had found the articles about the kid that had been following them - Parker Theodore Sandman, who'd died with the rest of his family in a car accident when their car had been hit by a drunk driver. The police reports and the notes from the paramedics who's arrived on scene had been fucking detailed and kind of chilling.

His family had died instantly in the crash, but Parker had been tossed something like twenty feet from the car and was still alive with a large piece of window lodged in his chest, screaming for his mother, when the paramedics had gotten there. The drunk driver had walked away without a scratch and only got a few years probation for causing the wreck.

Dean didn't want to think about the kid right then. He needed to focus on figuring out how to tell Sam he'd found a stop-gag measure for his gift. Something that would at least hold off the inevitable until he could learn some real control. Or figure out a way to get rid of it. Which ever one worked best.

Those books Dean had been reading had sort of danced around the issue. but they'd all had the same thing in common, each and every time.

Every necromancer who'd written a journal that had survived the years had only developed their gifts in early adulthood, near the end of puberty. Dean had sort of developed a little late, *_but then again puberty had hit kind of late for him too and then sort of rushed for the finish line_*.

And then there was the sex.

Each of them had mentioned sex in some far off, round about way.

Physical contact - the more intimate the better - helped create some kind of balance. Or at least it was like putting a cork into a leaking barrel. It would hold back most of the powers, but it was a temporary arrangement at best, but it was better than going crazy.

The one thing that they all seemed to have in common that really bothered him, was the mention that the younger the partner, the longer the cork would hold.

Staring down at the papers and books in front of him, Dean wasn't sure what he was going to do. He knew he wasn't going to touch Sage. He didn't give a fuck if it meant he went batshit crazy. He'd eat his own gun before he even lifted a finger to hurt that little girl.

But he couldn't not do something.

He could feel the way he was getting weaker. The way he was always exhausted no matter how much sleep he got - if he even got any. He was eating again, but he couldn't stomach large meals and had lost enough weight that he'd had to tighten up his belts just to keep his pants from slipping.

He couldn't keep going on like this. Sam wouldn't let him keep going on like this. Eventually his brother would start digging deeper, would go over the same books and papers Dean had and he'd see the same patterns Dean had found. And he knew that there was nothing he could do that his brother wouldn't forgive him for. He'd find Dean some hardly legal girl to fuck and be just fine with it.

But Dean wasn't sure he would be fine with having sex with someone who wasn't Sammy. They'd been through enough shit as it was. He didn't need nor want to risk losing the little stability he'd finally found. Even if it were already getting fucked six ways to Sunday.

~*~*~

  
"Okay," Sam announced when he got back to the room. "There are three different sites Parker might have gotten buried."

Dean looked up from the TV he hadn't really been watching and turned his attention to his brother. Sam was shrugging out of his coat while pulling papers out of one of the inner pockets. "There are three different cemeteries in this town?" Dean asked.

Sam tossed his coat onto the empty bed and wandered over to Dean. "Actually, there are only two here in town, but the other one is a few hours away," Sam explained as he dropped his massive body into the opposite chair. "And it's the largest one."

"Of course this can't be easy," Dean muttered.

Sam snorted and spread out the papers he'd brought back with him. "What ever made you think we'd get something easy?"

"Just kinda hoping is all," Dean replied.

"I was thinking, we could hit the bigger cemetery, Ranger Hill, tomorrow during the day," Sam went on. "It's the most likely spot for the kid to be buried since the county uses it for it's unclaimed bodies."

Dean nodded and leaned back in his chair, stretching out his back a little.

He could feel Sammy watching him as he moved. Dean only then remembered that it had actually been a few weeks since the last time they'd had sex. And they usually didn't skip that kind of thing unless they were in the middle of a hunt, or injured, or staying with someone who didn't know about them - _which was pretty much everyone_.

Having Sam watch him with something approaching desperate hunger was a thrill. After all, he'd been the one turning down sex since they'd had that fight. It was probably part of the reason Sam thought he was going to leave him. Because Dean never turned down sex, even when he was hurt. Not that he'd actually outright told Sam he wasn't interested, but Dean hadn't exactly encouraged Sam either. Had actually stepped away from his brother's touches more than once.

It made him feel like shit. Specially with what Dean was about to tell his brother. The supplies were already in the bathroom.

"So what did you do while I was gone?" Sam asked, leaning back and kicking up his feet onto the table. Dean watched as his brother swallowed his arousal, pushing it aside.

Dean nodded towards the papers that had been littering the table when Sam came in. "Was doing some research of my own," Dean confessed.

Sam glanced at the papers for the first time, tilting his head to one side to catch the title of one of the papers. "So what'd you find?" he asked, looking back to Dean with honest curiosity.

Dean didn't think he was going to get an actual invitation from Sammy at this point. Not with the number of time Sammy had asked without asking and Dean had turned him down without speaking. Sammy wouldn't put himself back out there if he didn't think Dean wanted him. Which was stupid, because Sam was the only person Dean wanted, had been for years and everyone else had just been a bunch of stand ins.

Pushing himself out of his seat, Dean walked around the little table to move to Sam's side. That guilty feeling kicked up when Sam watched him with open curiosity but guarded desire. _Kick a dog enough times and he'll learn not to get close_.

Wanting to take that guarded look off his brother's face, Dean put both his hands on Sam's chest and then quickly straddled his legs. Letting enough of his weight rest on him so that Sam couldn't bring his feet back to the floor. "Found out being touchy-feely is supposed to help."

Sam's hands landed on Dean's thighs, as though to steady him. But Dean knew it had more to do with keeping him where he was than making sure Dean didn't fall on his ass. "Yeah?" Sam asked, his voice cracking a little.

And nothing was going to hide the bulge Dean could feel rising against his inner thigh. Grinding down a little, Dean hummed a under his breath as Sam gasped under him. "Yeah. The more touchy-feely the better."

Leaning forward, Dean pressed a light kiss to Sam's mouth. Sam's hands tightened their hold on Dean's thighs, pulling him more firmly onto Sam's lap. But the kiss was still a little hesitant, more uncertain than Sam had been since the first few times they'd done this.

Dean hated that he'd done that to Sam. That he'd made his brother doubt, made him uncertain just how welcome his touch would be. Didn't matter that they shared a bed most nights, because most mornings Sam woke up alone.

Pulling back from the kiss, Dean ignored the soft sound of frustrated loss Sam made.

Patting his chest, Dean told him, "Supplies are already in the bathroom."

Apparently that was exactly what Sam wanted to hear, because he all but shoved Dean off his lap to get standing. It made Dean grin to see Sam so eager, but he couldn't really blame him. With the way things had been going lately, and the way Dean had been acting, there was a good chance Sam thought he wasn't going to get this again.

Leading the way to the bathroom, Dean checked quickly to make sure Sage was still sleeping before all but pushing Sam inside.

Soon as the door was closed and locked behind them, Sam turned hesitant again.

Dean wasn't going to stand for that. So he reached out and dragged Sam to him, pulled him down for a more heated kiss and backed them up until Dean's back was pressed against the door. Having Sam's body pressed up against his was sort of like coming home again. Sam's hands pushed under the layers of shirts Dean hand on and pressed into his back, searing his skin in the process.

Dean pulled back from the kiss, fingers woven through Sam's hair, just enough to whisper against his mouth, "Fuck, I missed this. Missed you."

Sam whimpered, eyes darkening with unguarded lust for the first time in about a month. It made Dean's breath catch in his throat. He pressed in closer to Dean, pushing a knee between Dean's legs, and dropping his hands to Dean's hips. When he dove back in for another hungry kiss, he pulled Dean's hips forward, grinding his dick against Sam's thigh.

Dean's back arched off the door at the sweet friction. Fuck, he hadn't gotten off since the last time they'd had sex. Too tired or busy to even bother jerking off in the shower. He was still too tired for this now, running on caffeine to stay awake, and Sam's smell to drive him crazy.

When Sam worked a hand into the back of Dean's jeans, palm pressed tightly to flesh, and grabbed his ass, Dean's hips jerked forward on their own. He broke their kiss with a gasp, and just rode Sam's thigh like a fucking horny teenager. There was a good chance he was going to end up coming in his pants while they were both still full clothed.

Sam undid his belt with his free hand, mouth dropping to trail hot, open mouthed kisses down Dean's throat. Dean could only clutch at his brother and tilt his head to give him more room to work. And when Sam managed to work a finger between the cheeks of his ass and rub against his opening, Dean cried out, grinding harder against Sam's thigh while trying to work himself back onto that finger.

"Fuck," Dean breathed. He ran his hands up Sam's back and shoulders, drove his fingers through his mop of hair and pulled Sam's mouth off his throat. "Stop," he whispered. "Fuck, please, stop."

Sam's reaction was immediate. He withdrew his hand from Dean's jeans and took a half step back, giving Dean room enough to breath, even while he mewled at the sudden loss. "Dean?" Sam voice was low, rough, and uncertain again. Dean could see it in his eyes while he tried to catch his breath.

Shaking his head a little, Dean didn't let Sam go. Didn't want him to pull away, not completely. "Want to come while you're fucking me," Dean told him.

Sam breathed a sigh of relief and then it was all quick work from there.

They didn't have much room in the little bathroom. Hardly enough space for just one of them, never mind both. But they managed to get their clothes off and scattered them on the floor. They ended up kneeling on the floor because they didn't think the counter would survive and the bathroom wasn't big enough to let them stretch out of the floor.

Sam already had two fingers lubed up and in Dean's ass the next time he had the chance for a proper clear thought. He reached down to grab Sam's wrist just as his brother found his prostate. Moaning, Dean made himself pull Sam's fingers from his body, made himself turn around to face his brother instead of just dropping to hands and knees and telling him to *_fuck him already, he'd been too long without_*.

Turning, Dean pushed Sam back until he was sitting on the floor with his back pressed against the door. When he was straddling Sam again, he brought his brother's hand back down to his ass, and Sam got the picture. because he pressed his fingers back into Dean's body and scissored them until he found that sweet spot again and just pressed short, firm strokes over it, forcing another cry from Dean's throat.

Clutching at Sam's shoulders, Dean fucked himself back onto Sam's hand. Need curled tight in his belly and ran hot in his blood. It was the first time he felt like he was producing his own body heat. And Sam didn't ease up, his stokes got firmer, more insistent, driving everything up that sweet line between pleasure and pain. Little desperate sounds were drawn out of him, because fuck he wanted to come so badly, but he couldn't get his hands to cooperate enough to stop clutching at Sam's shoulders and wrap around his dick.

"Now," Dean breathed, driving himself back on to Sam's fingers, Sam's cock sliding up the underside of his dick.

"Not enough prep," Sam told him, trying to be reasonable.

But Dean was already beyond reason. He wasn't going to last much longer, and he wanted Sammy dick up his ass before he came. "Please," he begged. And fuck, that didn't sound like his voice, but he watched it have the desired affect on his brother. Because Sam pulled his fingers out to get more lube to add a third finger, but Dean got there first.

Squeezing out a generous amount, he slicked up Sam's cock quickly and lined them up.

Sam cried out when he first breached Dean's body. They'd never done it this way before. They'd always used a condom. Because even though Dean had been pretty fanatical about getting himself tested, he still hadn't wanted to take the chance. That and the condom just made clean up easier.

Once he was seated completely on his brother's dick, Dean didn't even give himself time to really adjust. He just worked himself through the burn and fucked himself on Sam's cock.

Leaning forward, Dean bit at Sam's bottom lip, trying to draw him into a kiss. When Sam's mouth closed over his, hot and desperate and hungry, Dean sank into it. Let the feeling of being stretched and filled and fucked raw just wash over him.

It was hard and dirty and all kinds of right when Sam's still slick hand wrapped around his aching dick and started to stoke him. His orgasm fucking burned it's way up his spine, making him clamp down on Sam's dick as he came.

Sam worked him through it, kept working his hand on Dean's dick as Dean fucked Sam's cock. "I'm not leaving, Sammy," Dean whispered when his head dropped to Sam's shoulder. "I'm not going anywhere without you." He bit down on Sam's collar bone just as his brother's body jerked under him.

Then the only sound in the little room was their harsh, panting breaths.

Dean didn't think he could move. Didn't think he was ever going to be able to move again. The bathroom floor would make a good enough place to sleep for the night, he decided. They'd figure out a way to make it work.

Except, just as his heart slowed from racing, and he felt Sam finally catching his breath again, there was a timid knock on the door.

"De?" a little voice called to them.

Dean cursed into Sam's shoulder before turning his head so he could answer clearly. "What's the matter, sweetheart?"

"Scared," Sage answered.

Closing his eyes, Dean tried to will his body to move again. But Sam's hands running up and down his back wasn't helping him get to his feet. "We'll be out in just a minute, kiddo. Why don't you get back into bed, and I'll be there real soon."

He listened for an answer, but only hear the sound of the little feet shuffling across the carpet back to bed.

"I'm calling Ruby in the morning," Sam told him.

When Dean lifted his head from Sam's shoulder, an eyebrow raised in question, Sam explained further. "I want to do this again in a bed next time. Ruby likes the kid, and Sage likes her. Even if it's just for a few hours, at least we aren't going to get frost bite from romping on the bathroom floor."

Dean couldn't help laughing as he pressed a quick kiss to Sam's mouth before getting up to clean up and go comfort a little girl back to sleep.

  
~*~*~

They'd spent the first part of the day wandering around Ranger's Hill Cemetery. Sam was kind of glad that they were looking for a relatively new grave, because the place was huge. Even with the early start they'd gotten, they still hadn't finished working through the newer sections until early afternoon.

Of course, their speed wasn't helped by the kid wandering around grave markers and disappearing from sight, making both Dean and Sam worry and go looking for her. At one point Dean actually had to discourage her from taking some of the fresh flowers off one of the graves. Not that it had worked since Dean had caved to Sage's disappointed frown and let her collect them up and spread them out.

One flower for every marker they passed.

Sam was just glad that they had been the only ones there. Because once they'd finished combing through the names on the tombstones, Dean had leaned back on one and ran his hands of his tired and pale face, and asked, "Where's Sage?"

Looking around, Sam spotted the little girl trying to climb up on to a low hanging branch of a tree a few dozen feet away from them.

Taking quick steps, Sam made it to the tree before Sage figured out how to get her body more than six inches off the ground. "You shouldn't be climbing the trees, Sage," Sam said as he reached down and took the kid off the branch. He set her down on the ground a few feet away.

She just moved right back for the tree and Sam had been forced to pick her up and keep her off the ground. She'd made a frustrated sound and leaned out of Sam's arms towards the tree, straining to reach for it.

"No, Sage," Sam said firmly. He cringed a little at the fact he sounded like he was talking to a dog. But then again, he'd once been told that raising a kid was mostly about civilizing a little savage.

Sage pouted and stopped trying to wiggle her way out of his hold. Instead she'd pointed up at the tree trunk and said to Sam, "Want."

It was the first thing she'd ever said to him and it made Sam hesitate. Made him look at the little girl with dirt on her face in his arms and followed where she was pointing up at the tree. There was a piece of loose bark hanging just above his head.

"You want that piece of bark?" Sam asked.

When she nodded and turned wide eyes and pouty lip at him, Sam knew he was screwed. He wondered if this was what Dean had felt like when he was growing up and Sam would pull the puppy dog eyes on him, or pout because he hadn't gotten what he wanted. It was sort of like having his free will stripped from him. And, for reasons Sam wasn't sure he wanted to look to closely at, he didn't really mind.

He'd reached up and pulled the piece of bark free and gave it to her before turning to get back to Dean. Sage clutched at her newest treasure and tucked her head on his shoulder against his throat. It was late enough in the day that Sam was pretty sure they were going to miss Dean and Sage's normal nap time.

Of course, Dean's amused gaze was what he was greeted with when he got back to his brother.

"Don't," Sam told him. "I don't want to hear it."

Dean just snorted and pushed off the stone to fall into step next to them.

By the time they got back to the motel room, both Sage and Dean were having trouble keeping their eyes open. Ruby was already waiting for them in the parking lot, leaning against a car Sam hadn't seen before.

"We went through a drive thru on the way back," Sam informed Ruby as she followed them to their room. "So I only need to put these two down for their afternoon nap."

"Fuck you, man," Dean muttered, but he couldn't stop the yawn that nearly split his face. Sage was back in Dean's arms, sucking on her thumb. Dean shouldered passed Sam - arm and shoulder and side brushing across Sam's chest - to get into the room.

Sam couldn't help but smile and feel content, for just a small heartbeat in time.

Until Ruby cleared her throat with a knowing smirk on her face.

~*~*~

The sun had been set almost an hour when Dean finished his search. Having come up empty handed in the cemetery he'd gotten to search that evening, Dean drove back to the motel room to get some good news from Sam.

They'd split up the last two cemeteries, leaving Sage with Ruby back at the motel. Dean wasn't sure how much he liked leaving the kid with the demon, but Sage had looked eager to share her scrap book with someone new. Besides which, Ruby had pulled him aside and assured him she'd try and find out if Clayton had done more than just mentally and emotionally scar the kid while she'd been held captive.

Since Dean didn't know how to approach the subject with Sage himself, and the kid had refused to talk about it with him even when he'd tried, Dean was kind of hoping to get some good news from Ruby too. It would be a nice way to end the night. Getting those worries dealt with about Sage, and Sammy finding Parker's grave - since the ghost kid hadn't shown himself to Dean after their conversation in the soccer field.

Pulling into the motel parking lot, Dean parked the car next to Ruby's cheap little Honda.

The lights weren't on in their room. It was the first thing Dean noticed when he approached. Since Sam had borrowed Ruby's car, and it was back already, the lights should have been on. There should have been movement in the room. Fuck, Sam would have called if they were going somewhere before he got back.

Pulling his gun from the back of his pants, Dean made sure to hold the key's tightly in his hand to keep them from jingling as he slid the room key in and unlocked the door. The lock made an unnaturally loud sound when it clicked over, but Dean didn't wait to see if something was going to jump out at him. Just shoved the door open as wide as it would go and entered with his gun raised.

Their room was empty.

Shit was scattered everywhere on the floor and beds and table.

"Dean," a hollow voice filled the room. A shade took shape in the middle of the mess, still mostly translucent. "Dean, I've come to finish what we started. I have your brother and the girls. I won't hurt them, promise. I'll even let them go as soon as we finish those rituals I started. Come meet me at Ranger's Hill Cemetery."

The shade started to lose form as soon as he finished speaking. But Dean reached inside of himself for that cold spot where his connection to the dead lay. He didn't really know what he was doing, but he guessed since he didn't actually need rituals and spells to raise the dead, then he didn't really need to know what he was doing to do what he wanted.

_Intent had to count for something, right?_

Focusing hard on wanting to make a complete connection to the shade fading away before him, Dean felt the moment when it worked. When he touched the shade with that coldness and felt it take hold.

The shade gasped and blinked owlishly at Dean for a second. It looked, for all the world, like the ghost were trying to get it's bearings.

"What -?"

Dean didn't even get the chance to finish his sentence because the shade cut him off. "He's going to kill them. He's setting a trap for you."

"Kind of figured that," Dean snapped. "What kind of trap is he setting?"

"Don't know," the shade told him. And Dean could feel him slipping, could feel his hold on the spirit weakening. "But knows what you can do. I think he'll use it against you in a cemetery. So many dead there. Enough to draw your powers out hard enough that he won't have to finish the ritual. Just have to kill you."

~*~*~

When Dean got to Ranger Hill he could already see where Clayton had set up camp. He left the headlights of his truck running so he'd have enough light to work by. He parked the Impala near the entrance and got out of the car to approach on foot.

He couldn't make out the details, but he could see where Sam and Ruby were tied up. Could see the way Sam's shoulders were slumped a little forward, and Ruby was tilting precariously to one side. And he could see Clayton pacing not too far from them with Sage in his arms.

As he got closer, Dean could pick out the sound of Clayton's cheerful voice, but couldn't make out the words. Not over the sudden rush in his ears as the chattering started up in like white noise. There was no headache this time, just the wash of hundreds of voices all talking at once.

The voices changed from mindless chatter to a slowly rising tide of anger when Sam looked up and said something to the other man. Dean still couldn't make out the words, but he knew that tone of Sam's voice. Knew his brother was pissed and making threats.

And then Clayton laughed. Dean stuck to the shadows as he crept closer.

"Your brother'll be here soon enough," Clayton told Sam in that cheerful voice. "I'll kill him, then I'll kill you."

"What kind of coward are you?" Dean heard Sam ask. "You gotta try and gut a woman while she's tied up and can't fight back and then you go on and on about how you're going to cut up a little girl."

Dean was close enough now that he could see the blood on Sam's chin, could make out the dark splotch on Ruby's shirt where she was bleeding out. He'd hoped to get there before Clayton had a chance to start working on them. But he hadn't known how much time had passed since they'd been taken and when Dean got back to the room.

Dean felt his blood run cold through his veins. Felt the way his heart slowed to a deep steady beat, setting a tempo for the enraged chattering in the back of his mind. That cold feeling was rushing out of him. Catching on the air and spreading through the grave yard.  And then it wasn't just in his mind anymore. From the corner of his eyes he could see the gray shapes of spirits taking on a physical form in the darkness that surrounded Clayton's little camp.

He could feel the shades becoming more solid with each step he took. They felt like an extension of his body, like a third arm. And he knew how to use them, knew that intent was all that mattered when it came to controlling them. Ruby and Sam's blood fresh on the ground just added strength to that coldness. Little sacrifices to feed the dead and the power growing in him like a storm.

"Hey, Clayton!" Dean shouted when he was just outside of the soft edges of the light.

He watched as the other man spun in place, Sage held firmly in his arms. "Dean," the other man greeted with friendly sincerity. "I was worried you hadn't gotten my message."

"Got it just fine," Dean reassured him. "Even got the parts you left out, too."

Clayton frowned at him briefly before his smile came right back. "You're a lot stronger than I thought you'd be if you were able to bend my hold on the shade to have him speak freely." There was something like pride in the man's voice. "You must have been a little psychic already before I got to you. You shouldn't have been able to do that."

"Never did like to be average," Dean confessed.

Clayton nodded in understanding. "So you already know I don't intend to actually let them go."

"Pretty much," Dean answered, edging a little closer.

"It wouldn't have taken a genius to figure that out," Sam snorted in disgust.

Clayton lashed out with a flick of his wrist. Sam's head snapped back and Dean watched as a fresh split opened on his brother's lip. The force of the invisible blow knocked Sam into Ruby when he tipped over. Sam spat more blood on to the ground, and the power coursing cold through his body accepted the new blood offering.

"Shouldn't've done that," Ruby said in a weak voice.

Dean spared the demon a quick glance but she wasn't looking at any of them. She was looking out into the darkness that surrounded them. A darkness that was no longer empty, but filled now with the raised spirits of the dead.

Dean could feel them shuffling over the grass, creeping closer to the light. He could feel them waiting, mindless, for some order, command, that he hadn't given yet. It made his lips twist and pull into a smile. Because Clayton hadn't noticed them yet. He hadn't taken his eyes off Dean.

"I'm going to kill you," Clayton told him. His smile finally gone from his face. "Then I'm going to kill your brother and bind that woman's soul. And once I've done that, I'm going to take my time tearing that child apart. You'll all be wonderfully powerful additions to my collection."

"Seriously?" Dean asked. "You're monologuing, man."

Clayton shrugged and the smile came back. He raised his hand in Sage's direction, and Dean watched as the little girl was lifted off the ground and gave a shrill scream of fright.

"Put her down," Dean growled.

"You can't hurt me Dean," Clayton said. "Why should I?"

"Put her down. Now," Dean repeated.

"Make me," Clayton taunted.

And then just like that, Dean felt the spirits he'd raised rush forward.

He felt them close in on Clayton, watched as they surrounded him and cut him off from escape. There were so many of them. And Dean could feel all of them. Could feel their hunger, their rage, could feel the coldness that filled them and gave them substance.

When they reached Clayton, Dean could feel what they felt; like it was his own hands reaching out and grabbing the man anywhere he could ~~grab him~~. Could feel the way their fingers curled in to his flesh as Clayton began to scream.

Clayton's screams echoed in Dean's ears just as the sensations drove him to his knees.

He didn't know how to break away from them. Didn't know how to stop feeling what they were doing. He could feel flesh give way under nails and claws, felt slick muscles gripped in his hands as they were torn from bone. He could taste blood on his tongue when something bit into him.

Dean's fear and rage had fueled them, driven them from their rest and given them a purpose. And now he couldn't stop them. Like self-sustaining fusion, there was no way to break ties with the spirits he'd raised. he couldn't even find enough will to stop them.

He did this. He raised this ghostly army bent on destruction and vengeance and now he was stuck with the knowledge of exactly what he'd done. Because he could taste hot blood on his tongue when something used teeth to chew it's way closer to vital organs. And Clayton should be dead, but his heart was still beating, he was still screaming, or trying to scream when something grabbed hold of his lungs.

And Dean could feel it. Could feel all of it.

But fuck if he could find it in himself to feel remorse for killing the son of a bitch.

Darkness swallowed him when something finally tore into thick heart muscle.

+++++


	7. Chapter 7

**Part Seven**

Dean wasn't sure what was going on. One minute he'd been in the graveyard, unable to cut himself off from the dead he'd raised, and the next he was in the back of the Impala. Sam's worried face hovering above him.

Whatever had happened, at least he knew Sammy was alive. And since the car was moving, he could only assume that Ruby was too. Sage was missing from that picture and he tried to look around, except there was a tightening in his chest and forced his breath out of his lungs. His heart felt like it was burning, his lungs refused to draw in more air. He could feel the cold creeping of his gift rising inside of him and he couldn't force it back or hold it off.

Sam's mouth was moving, Dean was pretty sure he was shouting, but he couldn't hear a damn thing his brother was saying.

A white rush came over him leaving nothing but darkness in its wake.

~*~*~

_"Pull over!"_

"What's going on?"

"His heart's racing again."

"Fuck."

"He's freezing, Sam! Where the hell did you put the thermal blankets!?"

"The trunk!"

"De?"

"Fucking pull over!"

"I'm trying, dammit! It's not like I can just cut under a fucking eighteen wheeler!"

"De!"

"Just stop the fucking car!"

~*~*~

They were there.

Dean could feel them moving around him. Or maybe it was the world that was moving under them and they were just standing stationary. He didn't really care which it was, because he could feel them there. Could feel the light weight of a little body stretched out next to him, soft hair tickling his chin.

_"...seized twice already..."_

The light weight on his chest moved.

_"...get further away... Bobby... physical limit to his reach..."_

Drawing in his next breath, Dean was hit by the smell of sunshine, fresh dirt, and grape juice under laid with mint and spice, wrapped up in leather and stale socks. Home.

_"...bring him back... stubborn son of..."_

Dean wanted to speak, but couldn't figure out how to get his body to cooperate. Couldn't even get his eyes to open. He couldn't really muster up enough of himself to really care either. So he let go.

Just for a little while. He was still so cold and so fucking tired.

"Don't leave," the light weight on his chest whispered.

~*~*~

He was being manhandled in a cramped little space.

Large, heavy arms wrapped around his chest, shifting him and pulling him up and back. A leg pressed against Dean's side and then his back was resting against a warm chest. A strong, heavy heart was beating steadily against his back. Something to keep time by.

Sam dipped his head down buried his face into Dean's shoulder. He could smell Sam then. Could smell gunpowder and wood smoke and sweet apples. He could almost taste the bitter salt of Sam's silent tears.

Dean wanted to reach out to his brother. Wanted to make those tears stop falling. Because Dean wasn't going anywhere. He was right there. He was just tired was all, still too cold inside. But Sam's warmth was thawing the freeze and Dean could feel himself stretching underneath. He just couldn't break the surface.

_Soon, Sammy. I'm still here. I won't be gone long. Just need to sleep a little._

~*~*~

When Dean opened his eyes, Ruby's face hadn't exactly been the one he'd been hoping to see.

She had a spoon in one hand and a travel mug in the other. Dean could taste chicken broth on his tongue and he made a face at her.

They weren't in the car anymore, he noticed, seeing the faded paint on the walls for the first time. Blinking, Dean tried to look around and only managed to shift his head slightly on the lumpy pillow under him.

"Dean?" Ruby said. Her voice soft and guarded, but so fucking hopeful it made Dean's chest ache. He could only blink up at her, but that seemed to be more than enough because she'd dumped the spoon back into the travel mug and was shouting out for Sam, never taking her eyes off him.

"Sam! Sam, get in in here! Dean's awake!"

Foot steps thundered up the stairs and down the short hall just before the door to the bedroom burst open. Sam filled the space easily on his own. But with Sage on one hip and the desperate hope radiating out of him, he nearly dominated the room when he strode in towards the bed.

"Dean," Sam breathed, dropping to his knees next to the bed.

Dean managed to roll his head enough to face his brother when he said, "Sammy." A weak smile tugged at his lips when Sam laughed through his tears, just before he fell back asleep.

~*~*~

It takes a few more days, but three and a half weeks after raising an entire grave yard and the surrounding area of its dead, Dean is back up on his feet.

They'd taken him to Bobby's place. One of the few places in the world that held any sense of safety for them. They'd been there almost two weeks, not that Dean remembered arriving or anything. But with the way Bobby kept trying to push food onto him, Dean was willing to bet he'd scared the older man at some point.

He'd probably scared all of them at some point while he'd been out of it. Because Sage had glued herself to his side, refusing to let him out of her sight. She'd taken to following him around the house and then around the yard when he'd gotten back on his feet. She'd lean over the cars Dean would pick to look at, walk under them and bring him the tools he asked for when he decided to work on one.

She was more quiet and serious than when he'd first taken her out of that basement. And if it weren't for the way she'd attached herself to Bobby's side every time the man cooked or did something with the dogs, Dean would have been worried. As it was, she wasn't speaking as much, but she was reaching out more.

Bobby just gave him cars to work on, and helped him get a few new parts for the Impala. Aside from trying to stuff him full of food, Bobby only hovered when Dean was using the heavier machinery in the actual garage. Which, Dean suspected had more to do with the fact Sage was always with him.

Ruby disappeared in the middle of the night three days after Dean had finally woken up and hadn't really been back since. Dean knew she'd call from time to time because of the pinched look on Sam's face when he answered his phone. But aside from the calls every other day, Ruby had to be the only one actually giving him enough space to pull his shit together.

And he needed to get his shit ~~put back~~ together.

He'd killed a man using a small army he'd raised from the dead. He'd felt every moment of that attack, hadn't been able to pull himself away from it. He couldn't deny what he'd done, couldn't pretend it'd never happened. And he didn't really want to either.

Dean didn't regret killing Clayton Reynolds.

What worried him, what really frightened him, was _how_ he'd done it.

Those spirits he'd raised had been mindless, empty. So tightly bound under his control that Dean hadn't even needed to think about what he wanted them to do before they'd done it. They'd been driven by his darkest, most base instinct to destroy and completely obliterate.

Looking up to see Sammy hovering in the background, worry and concern tightening his features, Dean didn't know how to tell his brother. Couldn't find the words to explain to him that Dean hadn't needed a proper blood sacrifice to raise that many shades.

Wasn't even sure where to begin to explain that he could do it again on nothing more than a whim.

~*~*~

Dean had been enjoying a rare moment of alone time when Ruby came back. Sam was out back somewhere and Sage was perched on the counter watching Bobby cook. Ruby pulled into the front yard in a beat up blue Jeep Dean was pretty sure she hadn't left with.

She came up the steps of the porch and dropped into the sagging porch swing next to Dean with a sigh. "I'm not sticking around," she told him by way of greeting. "I'm just here to smack your brother upside the head."

Looking over at her, Dean asked, "What Sammy do to warrant a drive out here to deliver that smack personally?"

"He's being an ass," was all she said.

"Pretty sure Sam's out back," Dean told her.

"In a minute," Ruby said tiredly.

Quiet stretched between them for a few moments. Long enough that Dean leaned back and went back to enjoying being on his own, or at least out of sight of the people who were trying to smoother him with their mothering.

"You know you need to get your head out of your ass at some point, right?" Ruby asked, breaking the silence Dean had been enjoying.

Frowning he said, "Thought you were only here to hit my brother?"

"Consider it an added bonus," she told him, shrugging. "You got the short stick in the draw of luck, Dean, but you fucked up all on your own."

Sitting up straight, Dean demanded, "And how did I fuck up? I didn't ask for any of this, and I certainly didn't go looking for it."

"I told you that you were raising all those restless spirits on your own," Ruby pointed out. "Even warned you that while most of them would go back on their own once you were gone, some of them would be strong enough to sustain themselves without you."

"So what do you want me to do?" he asked angrily, pushing himself to his feet and turning to face the demon who was sprawled out on the porch swing. "If I go back to those places I can put some of them to rest, but I'm just going to end up raising a bunch more while I'm there."

Sitting up straight Ruby snapped, "And Sam can't forever be trailing behind you cleaning up your messes, Dean. You're a Hunter for crying out loud. Your job is to kill evil creatures and put violence and restless spirits to rest with salt and fire! Not leave behind a bunch of confused and disoriented ghosts, most of which don't even remember dying in the first place!"

Dean stared at her with a scowl on his face, because he couldn't argue with that. She was right and it fucking pissed him off that he had to admit that. "Still didn't answer my question," he pointed out with a slight snarl to his words. Jesus, he was tired of people dancing around the issue like they thought he would break. "What do you expect me to do? I can't go anywhere without raising more ghosts. Fuck, I raise road kill every time I get in the car!"

Ruby sighed and Dean watched all the fight go out of her. "Learn, Dean. I want you to learn how to control your gift more than to just ignore the constant chattering in your head. Learn how to put a lid on raising spirits unintentionally."

  
Dean snorted and crossed his arms over his chest. "And who am I supposed to go ask to teach me?" he asked, arching an eyebrow. "Said it yourself, there's only ever been a handful of people like me in history and they're all dead. Can't exactly go asking to learn at their knee now can I?"

"Go talk to your brother," Ruby told him, pushing herself off the porch swing. "It's the reason I came all the way out here to try and knock him around. Sam found someone who could teach you control and traded who knows what to get a copy of a necromancer's journal for you."

~*~*~

Sam had escaped out into the field behind Bobby's property, sitting half hidden by the tall grass. There hadn't been that many places to run to when they were kids and had gotten dumped on Bobby's door step so their Dad could go on a hunt in peace. The field out back had been one of those rare exceptions.

There was enough of a breeze that he didn't hear Dean's approach until his brother was only a few feet away from him. Sam looked up and watched Dean get closer before he dropped to the ground next to him.

"How'd you find me?" Sam asked, pulling a piece of grass up.

"You're a little taller than you were the last time you tried to hide out here," Dean informed him. "Saw your head above all the grass."

"Where's Sage?" Sam asked neutrally. The little girl had been nearly surgically attached to Dean's hip since he'd woken up. Sam understood her fear that Dean would leave her. It was the same reason Sam had found himself making excuses to be in the same space as his brother.

Dean laughed a little then. "She decided to start talking again," he said. Sam turned his head and raised an eyebrow in question. "Talked Bobby into teaching her how to cook."

Sam tossed his head back and laughed.

Bobby had known they were coming when Sam had called ahead, but the surprise on the older man's face when Sage had climbed out of the car had been priceless. It had actually been worth the soft hissing match they'd had after he'd explained where she'd come from and the fact Dean wanted to keep her. It had taken a few more days before Sam realized he'd already accepted the fact Dean wasn't going to give her up and that Sam had begun to think of her as theirs.

He actually started looking in to the curriculum they'd need to follow to home school the little girl. He still didn't think it was a good idea to keep on like they were, and he knew ~~he~~ that eventually they were going to have to talk about settling down somewhere. But this time, Sam didn't think that conversation would end in the same kind of argument it had the last time.

He was drawn out of his thoughts when Dean hit him upside the head.

"Ow," Sam whined. "What was that for?"

Dean shook his head and held up his hands. "Don't really know," he answered. "But Ruby asked me to pass the message along."

That made Sam look away, back out into the field. The silence stretching awkwardly between them. If Ruby had driven all the way out to Bobby's place and asked Dean to pass along the hit, that meant that Dean knew what he'd been up to. Or at least, some of what he'd been up to.

"I could do it again," Dean finally said, breaking the silence.

Frowning, Sam turned back to him, asking, "Do what again?"

"Raise another grave yard," he told Sam. "I didn't... You were hurt. And I just... I lost control and I raised them. Most necromancers would have needed a blood sacrifice to do what I did, Sammy. Me, I just got pissed and scared and fuck..."

Sam blinked, trying to process what Dean was telling him, or trying to tell him. Because Sam hadn't known that. He hadn't known that to be able to do what Dean had done, Dean should have needed an offering.

The dead belonged to Dean the same was the demons should have belonged to Sam. It was just the way things were. Sam had never thought to try thinking of how things should have been.

Leaning over, Sam bumped his shoulder against Dean's, trying to draw him back out. "Hey," Sam said in as reassuring a tone as he could manage. "I'd've done the same thing."

Dean ducked his head and picked at a thread working its way loose on the knee of his jeans. But he didn't respond, which Sam had sort of been expecting.

"Ruby tell you that I think I found someone who can help?" Sam asked instead of pushing the issue. They'd get a chance to hash it out soon or later. They always did.

Dean nodded. "Yeah, s'why she wanted to try knocking some sense into you." Sam caught him glancing his way before Dean asked, "So who'd you find?"

"A Daughter of the Grove," Sam told him. "She lives out in Colorado. Figured if I couldn't find another necromancer to help you, then I should look for someone who's abilities were just as ingrained and unpredictable as yours are."

Dean leaned into him and rested his forehead against Sam's upper arm. "Thanks, Sammy."

Sam turned his head and pressed a kiss to the top of Dean's head, breathed in his brother's sent and was just thankful he was still there. "No problem."

+++++


	8. Chapter 8

**Part Eight**

_Some months later..._

Dean was sitting on the floor in front of the coffee table with Sage, going over one of the lesson plans Sam had signed them up for. They were matching words with their corresponding pictures as they worked their way through the alphabet.

It had actually been a lot harder to sign Sage up for home schooling than Dean had originally thought. The school board they'd gone through had made them jump through burning hoops and do an obstacle blindfolded, until Sam had finally had enough.

Dean would have kept jumping through hoops but Sam had put his down and demanded to know why the school pussy footing around. They'd gotten the forms they'd needed the next day.

They were in upstate New York, catching the tail end of summer while dealing with a nasty poltergeist when Castiel suddenly appeared in the room.

Dean looked up when Sage gasped in surprise.

Seeing the angel standing there with his head tilted to one side wasn't something Dean had been expecting to ever see again.

"What are you doing here?" Dean asked, pushing himself to his feet.

Castiel drew his gaze from the table where they'd been working to look up at Dean. "We require your assistance. Another Seal will be broken a few miles from here."

Dean blinked at the other man. He'd been pretty sure God and the angels were done with him after what had happened with Clayton Reynolds. They hadn't heard so much as a whisper from them after they'd taken care of the Rawhead.

"Was pretty sure I was done with you," Dean responded. He felt Sage wrap her little arms around his calf and press her face into his leg. "Haven't heard much out of you since we dealt with the Rawhead for you."

"Why would you believe that?" Castiel asked.

"Oh, I don't know," Dean answered, waving his hand a little in the air. "Maybe because I'm the new poster boy for the 'I see dead people' line?"

Castiel tilted his head to one side, the slight wrinkle of his forehead the only thing to tell Dean he was confused. "It was always a possibility that our interference may have left you with a psychic gift," he told Dean. "Why would you believe that would make God turn from you?"

"Dude, I'm a necromancer," Dean stressed as though it were obvious.

"You speak for the dead, Dean," Castiel said. "Who else would we ask to save the living?"


End file.
